


Mischa

by OffendedShadows



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hannibal is a Cannibal, Hannibal is a good dad, Kid Fic, M/M, Murder Family, Possessive Hannibal, Possessive Mischa, Will Finds Out, apart from the bit where he's still super manipulative, season 1 AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-05-02
Packaged: 2019-04-14 05:14:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 30,361
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14128878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OffendedShadows/pseuds/OffendedShadows
Summary: Shortly after he first moved to Baltimore, Doctor Hannibal Lecter had an ill-fated love affair that resulted in the birth of a daughter. Thischangesthings.





	1. Gimlet

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fanfic I've written in a long, long while, but hopefully my writing skills haven't fossilised over. This has not been beta'd, so all mistakes are my own (if anyone is up for the challenge, let me know!). Also, it might not look like it in the first few chapters, but this is ultimately a Hannigram fic, just with a bonus Lecter.  
> Enjoy!

Doctor Lecter’s arrival on the Baltimore social scene caused quite a stir when he first settled into the city. He was preceded by interior decorators and contractors at his home, which was in a prominent and affluent location, and he had already made donations to various endeavours demonstrating an interest in theatre, music and the arts. He seemed quite determined to have his life in Baltimore perfectly prepared for him to step straight into, without having to pay catch up with any events.

Needless to say rumours were rife. In an age of internet searches and online presence it was easy enough for his future peers to look up the basics of his past and his career; that he had a family estate in Lithuania, had spent his youth in France, his student days in Italy, and started his medical career in America. The internet could tell them that he had a reputation as an excellent surgeon and had moved to Baltimore to complete his psychiatric residency at John Hopkins. He was literally a man of the world, but it could not tell them who he was.

It came as a delightful surprise when Doctor Lecter made his first appearance – at the opening night of the first opera of the season – that he was a tall, svelte man, impeccably dressed and startlingly young. Surely to have lived and thrived in so many places, to have become a well-respected surgeon, with such a broad and exacting knowledge of medicine of both mind and body, it was impossible to still only be in his early thirties? And yet the truth stood before them.

He instantly became the darling of the social scene, a fact that was only compounded after he hosted his first dinner party and those who had not fallen in love with his career, his money or his charisma, fell in love with his food. Doctor Lecter drew people to him like moths to a flame; providing light and warm conversation to those who stayed at a polite distance, but burning those who rudely tried to come too close.

Unfortunately for Doctor Lecter a new social scene meant renewed interest in his love life. Prior to his move he had no serious romantic connections, mostly keeping to himself and occasionally indulging in love affairs that would last several months at most. He was quite content to remain a bachelor, and had no plans to change this. The society mamas and papas did.

Most of the daughters – and occasional sons, when it was discovered he had no preferences for one gender or the other – were easy enough to brush aside. Many had no true interest, and were there on the whims of their parents more than anything else. Others were interested primarily in his money and his title, and could not care less whom those things belonged to. Occasionally they were genuinely interested in him, but more often than not Doctor Lecter was not interested in them.

Doctor Lecter was not above sexual urges or sexual attraction, however, and about two years after his arrival in Baltimore, and after the first wave of prospective brides had passed, he entered into a relationship with the sister of one of the city’s most prominent lawyers. She was beautiful and intelligent, with excellent taste in clothing and food, and was staying with her sister’s family for a few months whilst the roof of her house in Philadelphia was fixed.

This piece of information was the first of many things that would determine a short term attachment rather than a longer relationship. It was not that Doctor Lecter was in any way opposed to family members helping each other whilst in need – quite the opposite, in fact – it was that his lover had put off fixing her roof for so long that, instead of a quick mend that could have been done with her living at home, she had put it off and put it off until the whole thing had collapsed and most of her top floor needed remodelling, and causing a great deal of inconvenience for her family and colleagues. She was, in a word, lazy, and whilst not quite so great as sin as being rude, was still not a quality that Doctor Lecter appreciated.

He did not do her the disservice of waiting until she left Baltimore to break off their affair, and instead informed her as soon as he reached the decision. She had seemed a little annoyed at first, but had talked to him into one last night together before leaving without complaint. At the time, Doctor Lecter had thought that this had been a reasonable request, given the number of times they had slept together already, and the abruptness of the ending of their affair. In hindsight he had to admit that it was a mistake – although he could not regret its eventual outcome – as her mental health already appeared to be somewhat off-balance, and the offering of one last chance pushed wide the door of opportunities for one-more-chance in her eyes.

In a half-hearted and ill-thought out attempt to ensnare herself a rich doctor, the lawyer’s sister had purposefully split the condom that they used. She hadn’t thought anything would come of it, not really. And yet.

And yet, a month after her departure, a pregnancy test confirmed that the conception of her plan, at least, had worked. She called Doctor Lecter to let him know of this news, and after she announced that she would be keeping the child, he advised that she start scheduling regular visits with her gynaecologist (he could recommend a good one if she wished) and that they ought not to share the news until she passed out of the first trimester without complication.

After three months with no problems, she called Doctor Lecter again and stayed in regular communication with him as to the health of their future baby. She assumed that towards the end of her pregnancy, or once the baby had been born at the very latest, she would be returning to Baltimore and to Doctor Lecter and that they could resume their relationship where they had left off. He began to suspect that his assumption that she would be raising the child alone, with occasional input from him, was not to be the case.

The closer they got to the due date, the more she tried to assert herself into Doctor Lecter’s life, and the more he had to rebuff her attempts. He would not cut her out of his life; he had a clinical sort of interest in the child, and was content to fulfil his obligations towards its continued wellbeing in return for baring witness to its transformation from a bundle of cells to – eventually – a fully formed adult. He was not prepared to re-enter a relationship that could barely have been called that in the first instance.

When she went into labour, Doctor Lecter did not immediately rush to the hospital, only going there once he had finished with his shift for the day. By the time he arrived she was still hours away from giving birth, but was in a furore over the delay in his arrival. He offered no excuses, and refused to be in the delivery room when the baby was born.

Once the little girl had been cleaned and weighed and wrapped in a blanket, Doctor Lecter had taken her into his arms and, seeing his sister’s features in his daughter’s face, been unable not to wonder at time, tea cups, and the chances the universe offered. The mother of his child offered no such insights and broke into this reverie with questions as to when she would be able to leave the hospital and move into his house.

Not quite as stunned by this assumption as he wanted to admit – Doctor Lecter had not quite believed his foolish hope that she couldn’t possibly expect to move into his house and his life without some kind of prior discussion – he had told her again, on no uncertain terms, that their relationship was over and always would be, that he would be willing to provide anything she might need for their daughter’s well-being, and that was it.

He had returned his daughter to her mother’s arms and left the hospital, assuming that the next time he heard from her would be in regards to child support. He was not entirely wrong.

Two nights later as he was preparing for bed, the doorbell rang. Unsure of who it could be, Doctor Lecter hastily re-buttoned his shirt and pulled on a sweater, forgoing his usual three-piece suits, and went downstairs to open his door.

It was not a neighbour, nor was it was even one of his socialite ‘friends’ who did, very occasionally, drop by unannounced.

It was his daughter. It was his two day old daughter, wrapped only in a blanket and strapped into a travel-seat that was clearly too large for her, left on his doorstep in the middle of December. She was cold and shivering, and looked dangerously pale, and something primordial and instinctive in Doctor Lecter howled with rage.

Not even sparing the time to look around and see whether his daughter’s mother was still in the vicinity, he grabbed the travel seat and moved his daughter inside and shut the door as quickly and carefully as he could. He then stripped off his sweater, shirt and undershirt, and unwrapped the blanket around his daughter, cuddling her naked to his bare chest and wrapping them both in a much larger blanket from the hall closet.

Doctor Lecter cradled his freezing daughter into his body heat and hoped that it would be enough. At first she sat like a cold hard weight against him, her breaths short and fast as she curled, unmoving. Then, slowly, her skin regained its colour and her breaths deepened and evened out as she warmed up. After long, fraught moments she eventually let out an affronted wail, and he could not help but gasp in relief. She hiccoughed at the strange sound that reverberated through the chest that she was leant against, before giving a short, quiet whine, and promptly settling into exhausted sleep.

Relieved that she was out of immediate danger, Doctor Lecter sprang (gently, so as not to jostle his sleeping child) into action. He investigated the travel seat and found a birth certificate that revealed that the baby was still without a name, although he had been cited as the father, which considering the actions of his former lover, was actually a relief. He put a call through to a 24 hour delivery service, requesting basic baby supplies to tide him over until he was able to thoroughly research and chose his preferred products, and placed an order for a bassinet to be delivered the following day.

Then he called his lawyer’s office. Doctor Lecter had decided in the time it took to get his daughter warm and breathing again not to involve emergency services – he knew how to care for hyperthermia, and he knew an excellent paediatrician for any future needs, and he did not want the police sticking their noses into his business – but he wanted to make absolutely certain that he had primary legal care over his daughter, and that no one could take her away from him. Without revealing the way that her mother had left her, he could not get her stricken off as one of his daughter’s legal guardians, but that wasn’t going to matter for too long. A personal kind of vengeance would resolve that much more neatly than court orders and lawyers ever could.

Doctor Lecter would have a lot to do in the coming days. A lot of research, a lot of ordering and buying, a lot of appointments to rearrange, a lot of effort to adapt to this intrusion in his life. But for that moment he sat and stared at the slumbering face of his daughter. A small smile curled at the edges of his lips as he thought again about the fragility of tea cups and of the tiny, precious life in his hands that he now had the opportunity to shape in whatever way he chose. She was entirely his. He shared his body heat with her and named her, inevitably, Mischa.

That first day, after he had called in a leave of absence at the hospital, Doctor Lecter visited Katarina Delahousse, prominent Baltimore lawyer and sister of his ex-lover, at her offices. He brought his daughter with him. It was perhaps not the most politic of ways that this could be handled, as his appearance there could hardly be kept quiet, but it neatly resolved several pressing concerns at once.

Doctor Lecter had a great appreciation for familial connections, and for the role of aunts in particular. He wanted to antagonise Ms Delahousse, but he wanted her on his side, and taking some sort of role on Mischa’s life. He planned to take his role within society more seriously than he had before; rather than hosting to laugh and look down his nose, he intended to foster friendships that would be beneficial to his daughter, providing her with a family that he could not offer through blood.

“Dr Lecter,” Ms Delahousse greeted, once he was led into her office, but cut herself when she saw what he was holding. Had her assistant not forewarned her? “Is that my niece?” she asked, eyes wide and hands trembling at her side.

The door clicked shut behind them, the assistant only now leaving – so neglecting to tell his boss about the baby had been done on purpose, to see this sliver of a crack in the normally dauntingly professional façade.

“Yes,” Doctor Lecter answered simply. “And might I suggest finding a new assistant?”

Ms Delahousse’s gaze, that had until now been fixed on his daughter, glanced up to meet his eyes. The crack moulded over and she was all professionalism again. “Please, take a seat,” she offered, and returned to her own desk chair. “How may I help you today, Dr Lecter?”

“I was wondering if you might know where your sister has gone.”

Ms Delahousse blinked calmly at him as she considered which of the many questions she wished to pose to him in return. Instead – “I’m afraid the last time I saw my sister was before she gave birth. When she was still insisting that the two of you would be getting married and raising a family together.”

This information was vaguely concerning – if she had told enough people of her delusions in that area, perhaps he might come off as the villain of the melodrama he suddenly found himself embroiled in. He allowed an element of his consternation to show on his face, and his host responded accordingly.

“No one but her thought that you’d be getting married, Dr Lecter,” Ms Delahousse reassured. “For myself I thought that it was very poor taste to try and trap you into marriage with a baby.” Her gaze had settled once more on the bundle of warmth in his arms.

“I cannot begrudge her the gift that she has given me,” Doctor Lecter said slowly, “Although I’d have greatly preferred if she had not left it on my doorstep.”

There was silence as the words sank in. Mischa wriggled as she began to awake, and they both looked down to watch her yawn extravagantly and blink vacantly at her surroundings. Her lips pursed and her nose scrunched, and Doctor Lecter put his little finger to her lips to suck on as he hastened to dig out some of the formula that he had overnighted to his house.

Ms Delahousse led him to a small kitchenette in the staff room and watched in silence as he prepared to feed his daughter. Several minutes later, once they were once more ensconced in her office, and Mischa was sucking greedily on her bottle, she asked, “I trust there was no lasting damage?”

“None that I have been able to determine. I have been carrying her close to me to keep her temperature up and I believe she has been eating more than could normally be expected at this stage, but infants can take a while before they are able to regulate their own body temperature, and I fear her hunger might be as a result of –” Doctor Lecter cut himself off, knowing that Ms Delahousse would understand the implication, and appreciate his not completing the thought aloud.

“Have you talked to the police?” she asked.

Doctor Lecter stayed silent for a moment, ostensibly to wipe the milk that had escaped Mischa’s mouth away from her cheeks and chin, but in reality to let the question fester. It would not only be her sister’s name that would be dragged through the mud, if the truth came to light. Ms Delahousse’s husband had taken her name not vice versa, after all.

“No,” he said finally. “I don’t trust my daughter to your sister’s care, so I called my solicitor last night about getting sole custody, but I didn’t call the police.” Doctor Lecter looked up to meet Ms Delahousse’s eyes once more. “I am gravely concerned about your sister’s mental health. Even before Mischa’s birth –” this time he stopped talking, not out of design, but because a strange, wordless noise had escaped from the lady sat opposite him.

“Mischa?” Ms Delahousse asked, so quietly Doctor Lecter only heard because of the word she said; a word, a name that his ears and heart had been finely tuned to from the moment of his sister’s birth, and had grown only keener at his daughter’s.

Mischa spat out the nipple of the bottle, having finally done eating, and Doctor Lecter placed the bottle on Ms Delahousse’s desk, before putting a towel over his shoulder and raising his daughter to it. He wondered what kind of picture he made; still perfectly presented, the folds of his suit as crisp as ever, his hair perfectly coifed, his shoes gleaming with polish, and to complete the look a towel covered in tiny yellow ducklings thrown over his shoulder to protect his immaculate suit from the vomit his daughter attempted to spew down his back.

“My sister’s name,” he offered in return to the question. “And now my daughter’s, too.”

“You are very good with her,” Ms Delahousse complimented. She looked like she ached to hold Mischa for herself, but would not ask because being denied would hurt her worse than not knowing.

Doctor Lecter shifted Mischa back into his arms and removed the soiled towel. “I wasn’t expecting to be her primary care giver, I don’t know what I’m doing.” It had always been nigh on impossible for him to admit to any weakness, but lying had always been easy. He hadn’t expected to be the one looking after Mischa, but he hadn’t been entirely negligent in the months leading up to her birth.

“I can’t believe my sister did this to you,” Ms Delahousse hissed, more to herself than to him. “If she turns up at my door…” she trailed off, uncertain how to finish that sentence.

“I’d advise psychiatric help,” Doctor Lecter offered.

“Is that your professional opinion?” Ms Delahousse asked, momentarily redirecting her anger at him.

Doctor Lecter looked back down at Mischa who was blinking and pulling faces at him. Her eyes were a misty blue at the moment, but they were already darker than they had been at the hospital, and he suspected that they’d continue to darken for a while yet. “She left her two day old daughter on my doorstep, wearing nothing more than a blanket, in December. My judgement may be somewhat compromised, but I believe my worries that she poses a risk to herself and others are not unfounded.”

Ms Delahousse’s breathing stuttered at hearing the incident said aloud so clearly, and she bowed her head. “You’re right. I apologise. I am just… concerned.”

“You love your sister,” Doctor Lecter stated. “I may no longer care for her, but I would never persecute you for your feelings. I am concerned as well.”

“Why did you come to my office, Dr Lecter?” Ms Delahousse asked. “You could have informed me of all this over the phone.”

“I wanted you to meet your niece,” he replied simply. “I have no relatives in America, but I would not have Mischa grow up without family. Any grudge I hold against your sister does not extend to you. I would like you to be in her life.”

Ms Delahousse moved from her desk, to sit in the chair next to Doctor Lecter, and peered down at the small, scrunched face of her niece. “I would like to be in her life,” she confessed.

“Then I suppose you had better start calling me Hannibal,” Doctor Lecter offered.

“Katarina,” she returned.

Ms Delahousse did not get to hold her niece that day – for all that Doctor Lecter had never intended to become a father, he was finding it difficult to part with his daughter now that he held her in his arms – but she was given Doctor Lecter’s private number, and she and her husband both got an invite to his next dinner party, once little Mischa had a chance to settle into her new life.

This visit to Ms Delahousse’s office, that had been half-overheard by her nosy – and shortly unemployed – assistant, was more than enough to get the rumour mill churning away. The story was lurid enough to catch anyone’s attention, and the idea of a poor, chivalrous Doctor Lecter who had been so generous with his donations and his table being so ruthlessly pursued by a woman who had abandoned her own daughter to freeze to death, cast him as a classical romantic hero, made warm and human by the devotion he showed his daughter.

Doctor Lecter did not go out into society half as much as he used to as he adjusted to his new schedule, but society certainly came to him. He had many callers, most of them offering unsolicited advice and trying to catch a peek at the infant that he had, thus far, managed to keep away from prying eyes. A few of the more considerate ones made their offerings and left without any obvious overtures, but even they were an added burden in a difficult time.

Mischa was a relatively easy baby. Her wants were simple, she was not overly fussy, and when she was loud it was never for very long. She was, however, very clingy. Whether it was her natural inclination, or if it was related to some instinctive awareness of her mother’s abandonment and her father’s consequent lifesaving action, Doctor Lecter didn’t know. Whenever she was awake she would quickly became irritable and fractious whenever she was not in the same room as him.

This was not as much of a chore as he had at first assumed it would be; she was endlessly fascinating to him. Every day brought him some new discovery about her, and Mischa had settled into something close to a schedule within a few weeks, so Doctor Lecter still had the late evenings to himself. With the exception of Ms and Mr Delahousse – and the occasional nanny for social engagements he could not avoid – he did not intend to introduce Mischa to anyone until she could, at least, form words and stand upright. Mischa was also normally quite content to please herself, so long as Doctor Lecter stayed within her line of sight, so he found he could devote time and energy to pursuits outside of his daughter.

He had been extraordinarily lucky at the timing of her birth. With only a week left of his psychiatric residency, it had only taken a minimal amount of persuading – and a not inconsiderable donation to the hospital – for the hospital board to agree that Doctor Lecter had completed his training. All he had left to do to become a board certified psychiatrist was to sit his final examination, for which the next available test date was not until September. This gave him plenty of time to study for it and start looking for job opportunities without neglecting his care for Mischa.

Whilst he found himself more busy than he had been in quite some time, balancing childcare and education, he did not expect to curtail his societal obligations completely. It was important to have a life outside of one’s children, after all. So, after three months, Doctor Lecter felt confident in his ability to throw a dinner party without being interrupted by his capricious daughter. He was not yet willing to leave her for an evening (although he had steeled himself for a few short hours here and there), but he felt comfortable inviting a few of his closer acquaintances to his house, where he could monitor his daughter’s need for him. Doctor Lecter longed for conversation outside of a professional capacity, he had a freezer full of fresh meat, and Mischa now only regularly woke once during the night for feeding.

Alongside Ms and Mr Delahousse, he also invited the Chair of the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra’s board of directors and his wife, Mr and Dr Dunbarr, and a Boston novelist and fellow opera enthusiast and her husband, Mrs and Mr Komeda. He took great delight in the irony of preparing and serving to them the flesh of the woman that had so curbed his social commitments in the last months, although he took care not to serve the brain. Whatever mental illness his ex-lover had been suffering from, he did not wish for it to have a detrimental effect on himself or any of his guests.

Dinner was interrupted between the fourth and fifth course by a tentative knock on the dining room door. Excusing himself for a moment, Doctor Lecter found the nanny – that he had only reluctantly hired to take care of Mischa in the few periods were he himself was not capable – pacing the corridor and trying ineffectually to sooth Mischa, who was making increasingly unhappy noises.

“I’m so sorry Mr Lecter –” he started.

“Doctor,” he corrected, stepping up and smoothly transferring his daughter into his arms. She quieted instantly, and her fingers grabbed for his jacket and scrunched his lapel in an unyielding grip.

“She needed her Daddy,” the nanny said, sounding relieved that Mischa had quieted without causing a ruckus that would disturb Doctor Lecter’s guests any further.

“Tėčio,” Doctor Lecter corrected again. After much contemplation he had decided that he wished Mischa to be as fluent in Lithuanian as she was sure to be in English, and that he would have her use that tongue to name him. He took a few moments to rock her back to sleep, before handing her back to the nanny. She stirred a little, but stayed asleep.

Not half an hour later, and just before Doctor Lecter and his guests were to retire to the living room with their digestifs, they were interrupted once more, this time by a distant yet penetrating wailing. Some unidentifiable expression flickered across Doctor Lecter’s face as he was forced to excuse himself once more. When he went upstairs to the newly decorated nursery, the nanny looked almost distraught with the effort of trying to quiet down little Mischa, who was pink faced, howling, and having none of it.

This time she did not calm as soon as she was in her father’s arms, as though she was determined to let him know her displeasure at being ignored all evening. It was a fanciful notion only, but Doctor Lecter imagined that she was scowling at him as though she could scold him. He ran a finger gently over her downy cheek and she grabbed it and immediately put it in her mouth, chewing grumpily.

“Alright,” he murmured to her softly. “You have made your point quite effectively.”

“Sir?” the nanny asked, under the assumption that Doctor Lecter was talking to him.

“Your services will no longer be needed,” Doctor Lecter assured him.

“S-sir?” he stuttered out again.

“Send me an invoice.” With that, Doctor Lecter swept out of the room, Mischa cradled in his arms and still chewing on his fingers. “ _I hope that imbecile at least made sure your nappy was fresh,_ ” he told his daughter in Lithuanian. “ _I will be forced to take action, and it will become suspicious if all your caretakers but me disappear._ ” She released his finger and made a short, consonant-free noise that he choose to understand as an agreement.

So it was that Mischa began to set precedent for upsetting her father’s well-laid plans. Instead of being perhaps two or three years old before meeting his friends, she was three months, and an instant favourite. Instead of being a distant, peripheral interest in his life, she had taken centre stage. Instead of eligible bachelor, he was a single father. Instead of a life lived in purposeful solitude, Doctor Lecter had found a companion who he could teach to truly see him and appreciate the artistry of his works. Mischa had taken much away, but she would give him much more in return. Her love for him would be unconditional, and he would show her equal devotion in return.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things of note in this chapter:  
> The title is a gin based cocktail best served as an aperitif. Since S1E1 is Aperitif, and gin is colloquially known as mother’s ruin, I thought it fit.  
> I’m screwing a tiny bit with Hannibal’s timeline. In this, he didn’t do his original medical residency at John Hopkins, only his psychiatric residency.  
> Google tells me a normal American psychiatric residency would take four years, but I am choosing to ignore this fact and am going to say he did it in three.  
> Further googling tells me “tėtis” means “dad/daddy/papa” etc. in Lithuanian. Digging a little deeper, I believe it is pronounced “tay-tis” (please, someone, correct me if I’m wrong).  
> {{ EDIT 08/04: the wonderful [pandorasnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandorasnow) helped correct my Lithuanian! I had the right word, but the wrong variant of it, whoops! }}  
> I’m big fan of strong female characters, something that I think the show struggles with. So I apologise for the demonisation of Mischa’s mother (although I hopefully hoisted the “seriously mentally ill” banner high enough to alleviate it a little). If it makes you feel any better, I’m going to do my best to salvage the canon fems, and of course Mischa's going to be badass (I'm going to do my best, but dear god tell me if she starts sounding too Mary-Sue-y, or self-insert-y!).
> 
> NEXT TIME: We fast forward through the next 14 years as quickly as possible because it’s important, but I suck at writing children and I want Hannibal and Will to meet each other already.


	2. Kir Royale

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I still have no beta, so I apologise for any mistakes you find.

Balancing his career and his care for Mischa was a delicate and complicated task, Hannibal soon found. He wished to both spend all of his time raising Mischa – not trusting her in the care of the nannies, none of whom remained in his employ for more than a month – and to also have the shining career that he had been dreaming of prior to her birth. He was not a man used to compromising, and yet he found himself now doing so on an almost daily basis.

Nevertheless, when Mischa started kindergarten, Hannibal had built enough of a reputation for himself as a psychiatrist that he was able to open a private practice and whilst it was more of a gamble that he would have perhaps preferred, his name was well enough known that he easily attracted clientele, and was soon able to start being more selective as to who he took on as a patient.

Finding a receptionist proved to be as difficult a task as finding a nanny had been.

Mischa grew in leaps and bounds, and she had inherited his ability of absorbing knowledge. Once Hannibal had noticed her knack for languages he had included Italian in the steady stream of conversation he kept up with her, and had started introducing French as well. Ms Delahousse and her husband both spoke French, and were pleased to speak that language with their niece, and Mrs Komeda, who Hannibal had a healthy respect for due to being impeccably polite and yet utterly ruthless in her comments, could speak butchered Italian that she was happy to improve alongside Mischa.

As he had predicted, Mischa’s eyes had darkened until they were the same dark burgundy as his own, although her hair had stayed a beautiful golden blonde so like her namesake’s. She always seemed smaller in Hannibal’s eyes than the other children her age, but he could never tell if this was purely his perception due to left over worry at the way he had found her. She was a healthy child, so that cold December night did not seem to have left any lasting impact.

Mischa was very much a daddy’s girl. Everything she did had a ‘look, tėti, do you see what I’ve done?’ attached to the tail end of it, always looking to Hannibal for his approval, and shining bright under the power of it. She pushed at the boundaries he lay down as well, always with the same sentiment attached to her actions, but curious in these cases what his disapproval would do. He was a strict father, and would always mete punishment that fitted the crime, but he would always explain to her why he did what he did. Strange, perhaps, but he found he took almost as much pride in her rule breaking as he did in her other achievements.

The most pivotal of Mischa’s disobediences, was when she went into the hidden basement when she was seven. She had always known that it was there, and always known that no one else knew – she was part of the secret that kept it hidden. Her father would disappear down there for hours on end, sometimes, although he only did so after she had been put to bed for the night. But one of the most important rules was that she was not to go down there. The normal basement was fine, but the hidden one was forbidden.

But one night she woke from a nightmare and wanted her tėčio. He was not in his bedroom, nor the lounge, the study, the kitchen. The light was on in the kitchen, though, and the door to the basement was open, revealing that the light was on in there too. Mischa had never been afraid of anything in her own home, her father had made it into their sanctuary. So she walked, fearless, into the basement. The hidden basement door was shut, but she knew this was where Hannibal could be found.

Mischa hesitated, for a brief moment, because she knew that she would be breaking a rule, but decided to go in anyway. She had had a bad dream, and she wanted the comfort of her father’s arms around her, murmuring familiar fairy tales in Lithuanian and tucking her back into bed. When she opened the door it took her a moment to recognise Hannibal. He had a strange plastic suit that was splattered with blood on over his normal clothes, and his face was cold and distant, as though he was wearing a mask. At hearing her entrance, he turned towards her, bloody cleaver in hand, and for a brief moment Mischa thought he might attack her with it.

But she had only caught him off-guard, and he lowered his arm, and his face returned to normal.

“What are you doing down here, Mischa?” Hannibal asked. “You know you’re not allowed.”

“I had a bad dream,” she explained.

He sighed, and glanced at whatever it was behind him that was still hidden from her view. “Very well,” he finally acquiesced. “I am busy just at the moment, dearest, so you will have to wait a little while.”

Mischa nodded agreeably, but didn’t move, waiting expectantly in the doorway. She had become used to watching him finish his work when he was teaching or writing up his notes, and expected the same to happen now. Hannibal had not intended for her to find out so soon, but perhaps it was better to reveal his favourite hobby as she was still learning empathy, rather than later when it might make her doubt him.

“Keep to the edge of the room,” he directed her, “sit up on that stool until I am finished.”

She nodded and tip toed almost playfully along the wall, and hoisted herself up with some little effort, as the stool was quite tall. Once seated she swung her legs and watched him curiously.

“What are you doing?”

“Be careful not to kick off your slippers,” Hannibal advised. Then, once he was happy that she was in one spot and unlikely to accidentally leave any evidence behind, he returned to the body that he had been working on. This was not one of his masterpieces, and would never be attributed to the Chesapeake Ripper. Indeed, it was unlikely that it would ever be considered as anything more than a missing person. He had already drained the body of most of its blood, skinned it and removed all of the delicate internal organs, all that remained was to finish butchering of the rest of the meat.

“You know Mr Peterson?” Hannibal asked Mischa as he returned to his work.

“That’s not him,” she answered. “That one’s not tall enough.”

“Correct, but do you remember what he did?”

“Mr Peterson is a butcher,” Mischa said thoughtfully. “He showed me his backroom, where he had his meat hanging up.”

“Do you remember what kind of meat he butchered?”

“Pig and cow and sheep. Pork and beef and lamb. I think… deer? Venison? As well.”

Hannibal glanced up at her and smiled. “Well done.” As always, Mischa glowed under his praise. “What did he say about rare meats?”

Mischa thought about this before answering. “He told you that he could get you rare meat, but that he’d have to be careful because he needed to avoid customs. I think he meant that it was against the law.”

“What I am doing,” Hannibal said, returning to the original question that she had asked, “Is butchering a very special kind of meat. It is not rare, but it is very much against the law, and if anyone ever found out, you would probably never see me ever again.”

“Because this meat is people, and killing people is bad?” Mischa guessed.

“Society thinks that killing people is bad, yes,” he agreed.

“But you have to kill if you want meat, because if you wait for the animal to die the meat will have gone bad.”

“Yes.”

“Does it taste good?” Mischa asked.

Hannibal laughed. “Why don’t you tell me after breakfast tomorrow, dearest? I will make some bacon for you.”

“People bacon,” she said, a little doubtfully.

“You haven’t complained yet,” he teased.

During their conversation Mischa had been watching what he had been doing with intense curiosity, but she had not looked repulsed at any point. Now that he had finished carving, she lost interest as he started tidying everything away.

“What was his name?” she asked.

Hannibal hesitated before answering, wondering if this was the moment when she began to turn away from him.

“Julian Brown.”

“Wasn’t he that teacher that made you decide against The Key School for me?”

It was somewhat surprising that Mischa remembered this, but perhaps if Mr Brown had left such a lasting impression on Hannibal, it wasn’t that surprising that he might do the same for the younger Lecter as well.

“It’s probably a good thing he’s not teaching anymore,” Mischa continued. “He wasn’t very good.”

Hannibal laughed again, delighted. Maybe, just maybe, this would all work out far better than he had ever dreamed. He’d had concerns about having to drug Mischa into compliance, about potentially having to home school her for a while until she learnt what she could and could not tell her peers, which would mean a reduction of his hours at the practice as well. He had worried as he had pictured her fighting him, hating him, pictured himself having to subdue her.

Instead, his sleepy little girl, close to tumbling off the stool that she was perched on, watching and talking about butchering a man – a man that she had met, even! – as calmly as if they were discussing schoolwork.

By the time he had put everything away, finished cleaning, and taken care of his clean suit, Mischa was all but asleep on her seat. Hannibal lifted her up carefully, and her arms and legs wrapped around him, and she buried her face in his neck the same way that she always did, with none of the hesitation or the fear that he had been worried about.

“I’m sorry I broke your rule, tėti” Mischa mumbled.

“There will be some new rules we’ll need to discuss in the morning,” Doctor Lecter replied, “but I had been planning on showing you this soon anyway.” Then he had carried her up to bed and tucked her to sleep.

Come morning she had eaten the ‘people bacon’ like a wine aficionado at a tasting, sniffing it first and chewing it slowly with great showmanship, before happily wolfing down the rest and dubbing it as delicious as always. They had gone over a few more rules for both of their protection and secrecy, and Doctor Lecter had set her a research project on different kinds of rare meats as punishment for going down to the hidden basement when she had explicitly been told not to. Everything continued like normal.

Hannibal waited a few days, expecting the other shoe to drop, but it never happened. Mischa had questions for him, because she was naturally curious, and he always attempted to answer them as honestly as he could, and she accepted what he told her and would ask more questions based off the new knowledge. She did not come down to the basement to watch him work very often – and never on a school night, because getting plenty of sleep was important and the work could frequently take him into the early morning – but Hannibal became used to explaining what he was doing and why when the stool in the corner of his workroom was occupied. When Mischa asked what was for dinner he took joy in being able to tell her the truth. There had never been anyone in his life that he had been able to be so honest with before.

In spite of her apparent lack of concern for the people that she was now consciously consuming, Mischa did not seem to be otherwise adversely effected, she didn’t have nightmares about it and had no difficulty making connections with her peers. As she got older she had more and more questions about morality and ethics, about what made things right or wrong, good or bad. Hannibal taught her about different religions and mythologies, about how faith guided human interaction within society. She always had more questions for him, but she never asked him to change, and she kept his – their – secret.

The closest she ever came to asking him to stop was when Mischa was twelve and Miriam Lass found Hannibal’s sketch of the Wound Man in his office and identified him as the Chesapeake Ripper. Mischa was at school at the time, and didn’t hear anything about it until that evening. When she asked her father over dinner about whether anything interesting had happened to him that day, he had outlined the incident with the trainee FBI agent.

Mischa had been horrified. She was old enough by then to know what would happen to Hannibal if he was discovered, and by extension what would probably happen to her. She was as fiercely protective of her father as he was of her, and just the thought of losing him was unbearable.

“I think… I think you need to stop,” Mischa said quietly, staring bleakly down at the plate of half-touched food in front of her.

“Excuse me?” Hannibal asked dangerously. Was this the moment? Surely not now, not after all this time? “If you are concerned for the fate of Ms Lass, she isn’t dead,” he told Mischa stonily, in case it was the matter of his victim being law enforcement that was bothering his daughter.

“ _What_?” Mischa spluttered, absolutely aghast. “What do you mean she isn’t dead?”

“She’s tied up in the basement.”

“ _Why_?” Mischa exclaimed, getting increasingly high-pitched, and sounding increasingly afraid.

Hannibal looked at his daughter curiously, suddenly acutely aware that his own fears had made him unable to follow her own thought processes and fears. “Explain to me what you are thinking,” he requested of her. This entreaty was a familiar one; whenever there was a miscommunication between them and one did not understand the other, Hannibal made sure that they took the time to stop and try and explain. Continued miscommunication meant an inability for future communication, which was untenable when living together and loving each other as dearly as they did.

Mischa took a deep breath and raised her eyes from her food to meet his gaze. “The FBI almost caught you because you had a drawing of one of your kills in your public office. This makes me afraid, because I don’t want to lose you. Then you told me that you didn’t kill the FBI agent, which means that if someone finds her, she can tell them about you. This makes me afraid, because I _don’t want to lose you_.”

“You said you want me to stop,” Hannibal prompted.

“I don’t want you to stop,” Mischa corrected. “I think you need to. Or, at least, you need to stop displaying them. They almost found you, and I –” she choked and stopped talking to rub furiously at her face as though she could push her tears back into her eyes. She looked up at him again, and opened her mouth to try and continue speaking, but found herself unable to as she hunched in on herself and began sobbing in earnest.

“Oh, Mischa,” Hannibal said tenderly, as he stood from his seat and rounded the table so that he could pull her into his arms. “They will not catch me,” he reassured her as he hugged her tight. “They will not take you away from me.”

Mischa drew back so she could look at him and asked earnestly, “But what if they do? What if the FBI lady escapes? It’s one thing for a surgeon to have a sketch of the Wound Man, it’s another thing entirely to kidnap someone!”

Hannibal had been considering the idea of keeping Ms Lass alive, of trying some less-than-ethical psychiatric experiments on her to see what did and did not work, and why. Maybe, if he did particularly well, he might be able to use her at a later date to redirect suspicion. Now, he found himself considering a different idea entirely.

“The only way to make absolutely certain that she does not escape and tell anyone is for her to die,” Hannibal told Mischa.

“I know.”

“I don’t intend to kill her,” he continued.

Mischa opened her mouth in preparation to ask him ‘why’ again, but stopped herself. He could almost see the moment of epiphany as it spread across her face. “You want me to kill her,” Mischa whispered, wide eyed and wondering.

Hannibal smiled. “No, dearest. I want to keep her alive, to practice psychic driving. You are the one who wants her to die.”

Mischa considered this, her tears long forgotten even as they dried on her cheeks, and her father’s hands warm and steady weights on her shoulder. There would be an investigation into the disappearance of the FBI agent, and that investigation was very likely to lead to the Lecters’ door. To ensure that no real suspicion fell on her father, Ms Lass had to leave no trace behind. They could hide her away at one of the many properties that they owned and couldn’t be traced back to them, but she might escape and tell everyone anyway. Or they could kill her and make sure she’d never tell anyone anything.

“You’re letting me choose,” Mischa stated.

“Yes,” Hannibal confirmed. “I have told you before that with every choice there is a consequence. If you choose to let her live you must trust that I can keep her locked away. If you choose to kill her, you must be able to do it yourself.” He stood then, and moved away from her. “You have until 9pm to make your decision. Whatever you decide, we must act quickly, and that is the most leeway I can give you.”

Mischa nodded distractedly, and moved to help him clear away their half-finished meal.

They cleaned up in silence, moving together with all the ease of long years of practice, and Hannibal was quite content to leave Mischa to her thoughts. He wasn’t certain yet whether he had pushed too hard. There was a big difference between knowing and accepting a murderer, and being one. Mischa was still young, too young, perhaps, to be making this decision. But, in many ways, she had already made her choice. The only difference between what she had expected and the rules that Hannibal had laid down was who it was that would actually do the killing.

By the time the kitchen was cleaned and all the dishes were put away, Mischa’s eyes had hardened and her jaw had set. She was clearly ready to face the consequence of her choice.

“I won’t risk you,” Mischa told him. “Not even on the altar of your own arrogance.”

Hannibal winced as that comment hit home, but he was forced in this instance to concede Mischa’s point. He had become comfortable – in his home life, in his work, in his artistry of murder – and had become over-confident in his own abilities to avoid detection. It was not he alone that would suffer if he was discovered anymore. And he had no one to blame but himself for leaving a sketch of his latest kill lying around in his office where anyone could see it.

“When I do this – promise me you’ll stop displaying them?” Mischa asked. “Not forever. Just… just until the FBI aren’t sniffing around in our front garden. And promise to be more careful.”

Hannibal gathered Mischa into a hug again, breathed in the scent of her and saved this moment forever in his memory palace. This would be the last time he embraced her before she became a murderer. This was a different kind of tea cup that he was watching fall, as if in slow motion and powerless to stop it, and it would be a different kind of shattering when it landed. In this moment he would promise Mischa anything she asked of him.

“I promise,” he agreed.

Then he took her by the hand and led her down the basement steps, and opened the door to the hidden basement for her.

Miriam Lass had gained consciousness, and was struggling fruitlessly against the duct tape that was keeping her strapped tightly to a plain metal chair. When they entered she froze and looked up at them, and her eyes went impossibly wide as they saw Mischa, and she started shaking her head frantically in denial.

“Don’t worry,” Hannibal told the FBI agent with a smirk, “I’m not going to hurt her. I’m not going to hurt you, either.”

Mischa scowled at her father and scolded, “Cruel, tėti.”

Hannibal’s shark-like smile only grew wider. “I never denied being cruel, dearest.”

Miriam Lass was looking between them with increasing alarm and she had gone horribly pale as she seemed to realise what it was that was occurring. She was clever, this one. That was what had got her into this mess in the first place.

“The floor is yours,” Hannibal said to Mischa, then retreated to the stool by the wall that Mischa sat on to watch him work. He appreciated the symmetry of the moment, although he doubted Mischa would. There were so many things that he could say to her at this crucial moment, but nothing that would not be a repetition of something that she already knew, so he held his tongue and watched.

Mischa looked at Miriam for a long time, not moving. She catalogued every little detail of the FBI agent, from her bitten nails to her hair that was still, somehow, perfectly tied back. Mischa would remember this woman, and honour her memory. She would regret that circumstance had led to her having to kill Miriam, but she would not regret the kill itself.

Having looked her fill, Mischa went to the tray of tools Hannibal had left there and picked up a long sharp knife. Then she walked up behind Miriam, grasped her head tight with one arm to hold it still and used her free hand to slit her throat.

Blood spurted forward initially and Miriam made horrible gurgling sounds, but the blood flow soon slowed, and Miriam’s head fell back as she died to display her cut throat garishly.

Mischa was expressionless as she wiped the knife off on a part of Miriam’s blouse that hadn’t been soaked red, then looked to her father.

“Well done,” Hannibal said, the same way he always did with pride and approval in his voice. For the first time that he could remember, however, Mischa did not preen with his praise. This, then. This would be the moment he lost her. “What do you want to do with the body?” he asked.

Mischa didn’t look at Hannibal, her eyes still transfixed on the body that had until very recently been Miriam Lass. “She deserves to be made into a feast,” Mischa said finally. “A celebration of her life and a sharing of her strength.”

Ordinarily Hannibal would be very pleased with this decision. It was a good answer. But he was too worried about Mischa. Had her act of choosing not to lose him led to his loss of her? That was an unacceptable trade. He should have done as his daughter asked, what she had expected of him in the first instance, and killed the FBI agent himself.

“Show me what to do,” Mischa demanded, pulling him from his thoughts.

It was on the tip of his tongue to berate her for not asking nicely, but tonight had not been a night of asking nicely, had it? Instead, he helped Mischa untie the body, strip it, and hang it so that it could be drained.

“Once this is finished we’ll need to skin her, then we can start harvesting,” Hannibal said. “Would you like me to make you a hot chocolate whilst we wait?”

“No,” Mischa said shortly. Then, after a moment’s hesitation, “Thank you.”

“Mischa,” Hannibal sighed, reaching out to her, and was incapable of hiding how hurt he was when she shied away from him.

Mischa walked away from him and, for a moment, he thought she might just walk out of the basement, out of their house, out of his life. But she pivoted at the door and stormed back, before turning away again.

She paced for several minutes before stopping in the middle of the room with her back to him and letting out a small noise of pure frustration.

“I am so angry with you!” Mischa declared to the door. She span to face him. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this!”

“Like what?”

“I was supposed to get to decide! And not a stupid decision between killing her and losing you! I was supposed to be able to pick for myself who my first kill would be, and it wasn’t just going to be tidying up your mess!” Mischa had started speaking at a reasonable tone, but was soon yelling, and Hannibal was grateful for the soundproofing and the distant neighbours. “I always knew you were going to ask me to kill, and that was fine, but I wanted it to be on my terms, and you took that away from me.”

“Oh, dearest, I am so sorry,” Hannibal said, genuinely regretful. He had no idea this was the reason that Mischa had been withdrawing from him all evening. Instead of pulling away from him she was demonstrating just how far she was willing to go, how much she was willing to do, all for his sake.

“No,” Mischa denied. “Don’t you dare apologise, don’t you dare take the small glory of this kill away from me too.”

“This is no _small_ glory, Mischa! Your first kill was an FBI agent – do you know how remarkable that is?” Hannibal cajoled.

“Trainee FBI agent,” Mischa muttered angrily.

“You deliberately killed an FBI agent, and did so for the protection of that which you loved. I am sorry that I did not let you have the pick of humanity, but you must believe me that you were magnificent!” Hannibal’s previous ‘well done’ had clearly not been enough to demonstrate just how proud he was of her.

Mischa flushed a little from his praise, she stood a little taller and a smug smile tried to tug at her lips, before she determinedly scowled it away. “I’m still very angry with you,” she said, although it sounded like as much a reminder for herself as it was to him.

Hannibal bowed his head, hiding his own smile. “I shall have to earn your forgiveness,” he replied.

Mischa didn’t say anything to this, only nodded in agreement, but when they returned to their work of skinning and butchering, the silence between them was not nearly as heavy as it had been before. They had fought; it had been an important fight to re-establish boundaries as Mischa was getting older and maturing; it had been a dangerous fight because they had both come so close to losing something they could not bare to be parted from. But they had come through it together, and their understanding of one another, and therefore their relationship, would be stronger because of it.

The next morning they sent out invitations for a classically extravagant Lecter dinner party, this time with Mischa in a starring role. She had always been present at Hannibal’s parties, but the kowtowing of the adults held little interest for a young girl, so she had only ever made brief appearances amongst his guests before eating her dinner in the kitchen with the staff he hired to help serve who were much more likely to include her in conversation and much less likely to fawn over her in an attempt to get into Hannibal’s good graces.

This time, however, the party was a celebration of Mischa’s first kill, although the guests would not know it, so there could be no hiding away. But with a promise from Mrs and Mr Komeda, and her aunt and uncle Delahousse to act as barriers between herself and the rest of the herd, Mischa did not think she would be so easily bored as she once would have been.

The evening was spectacular. The guests were, on the whole, perfectly charming and complimentary, and Mrs Komeda and Mischa’s aunt Katarina quickly cut those who weren’t down to size. Mischa had also had the chance to be reintroduced to Doctor Alana Bloom, whom she’d met a few times before as first a student and then a colleague of her father’s, but hadn’t really talked to. But the true highlight of the evening was the food. Mischa had helped her father in the kitchen before, but this feast was a true demonstration of their shared culinary efforts, and it was delicious.

More than that, every bite of meat – of _Miriam_ – that their guests ate sent a shiver of glee and satisfaction down Mischa’s spine, and she could not keep from smiling proudly. When she caught Hannibal’s eyes across the length of the table, he smiled knowingly back at her and the warmth of a secret shared stretched between them, unknown by all the guests who separated them. Mischa felt the last of her anger towards her father for forcing her hand dissipate as the last plate was cleared away.

Hannibal kept his promise to keep from displaying his victims, even though the FBI didn’t so much as twitch in their direction during their investigation into the disappearance of Miriam Lass, and he even reduced the frequency at which he killed, choosing instead to order actual pork and beef and lamb, as well as other, rarer foods.

Similarly, Mischa made no mention of wanting to kill someone herself. She felt no compulsion to do so, and she was self-aware enough to recognise that when she killed again it would likely be for a similar reason, for the protection of her family. Hannibal asked her about it only once, and she reassured him that when she did decide to kill again, she would let him know. Mischa killed for his sake, she would not deprive him of the pleasure he would find in watching her.

The next important change in their lives would come two years later, and neither of them would immediately notice the significance of it. Hannibal would arrive home in the evening with a strange expression on his face, and over dinner Mischa would eventually cave to her curiosity and ask him what had put it there. And Hannibal would tell her about another visit from an FBI agent, about travelling to Quantico, and about meeting a man called Will Graham.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things of note in this chapter:  
> I cannot write children. I can only apologise for this.  
> There’s a really awkward shift from ‘Doctor Lecter’ to ‘Hannibal’ at the beginning of this chapter, but when I was writing the intimate scenes between him and Mischa I just couldn’t keep using his formal title.  
> The Key School is a real private school in the Baltimore area. I know this only because I googled “private schools in Baltimore”. It’s actually got a really good reputation. Julian Brown is 100% fictional.  
> Hannibal’s grooming his own little murder groupie. This is in no way good behaviour, and made me seriously reconsider the 'good dad' tag. That tag is on probation for the moment.  
> I googled how to butcher a pig for this story and it’s pretty gross, especially when you’re trying to work out how that would translate to butchering a human, so I have glossed over most of the details.  
> I kind of love Mrs Komeda, even though she’s only on the show for, like, half a second. Anyone who can chastise Hannibal about feasts not being unicorns is a good’un in my book.  
> {{ EDIT 08/04: the wonderful [pandorasnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandorasnow) has helped me correct my Lithuanian... I know I'm only using one word, but I was still getting it wrong! }}
> 
> NEXT TIME: Mischa hears more about Hannibal’s first meeting with Will (sorrynotsorry for leaving you hanging at the end of this chapter), the rest of _Aperitif_ happens, and things start changing.


	3. Soixante-Quinze

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No beta so apologies for any mistakes, but massive thanks to [pandorasnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandorasnow) for helping with my Lithuanian... I may have decided to only use one word, but apparently I was even doing that wrong!

When her father started their dinner conversation by announcing he had been visited by an FBI agent, Mischa’s fork hesitated on the way to her mouth only very briefly before it continued its journey and she delicately ate the bite of food as she absorbed this information. She could not help but be reminded of a similar discussion they’d had two years ago, and she knew that Hannibal would be acutely aware of the parallels as well and would tease her with them if she let him.

Mischa decided she would not, not with the strange look that gleamed in her father’s eye that was not quite like anything she’d seen before, and was certainly nothing like his expression when he’d told her of Miriam Lass.

“I sincerely hope that you are not about to tell me that we have another FBI agent tied up in our basement that you want me to kill,” Mischa told him sternly. She did not honestly think there would be. Her father was many things but he did not make the same mistakes twice.

“But you would kill him, if there was,” Hannibal stated

Mischa sighed and didn’t deny that this was true. “It would take me much longer to forgive you this time,” she replied.

Hannibal smiled at her fondly, “You are a wonder, dearest.”

Mischa smiled and ducked her head, concentrating on her food for a while before asking, “So what did the FBI man want?”

“He wanted my help putting together a psychological profile,” Hannibal explained, inviting Mischa to find as much delight in the notion as he did.

“Using a serial killer to catch a serial killer,” Mischa said with a grin.

“Not quite,” Hannibal corrected. “The profile he wanted was of one of his consultants – special agent Will Graham.”

The way that Hannibal said this stranger’s name made Mischa pause again, and study her father closely. She did not interrupt as he continued.

“They are working on a case of eight missing girls in Minnesota, who have been killed and cannibalised,” Hannibal’s mouth around these words fluttered as though he could not quite contain his pleasure. “Will normally teaches at the FBI academy, but he was invited onto the case because he has a unique perspective. He has pure empathy, can assume the point of view of anyone he chooses, but he struggles with what he sees and his own morality. I have been asked to help him catch this killer, and make sure he doesn’t lose himself in the process.”

“Sounds dangerous, playing cat and mouse with the FBI,” Mischa remarked, not missing the fact that her usually so formal father had used the special agent’s first name.

“Only if you are the mouse,” Hannibal replied, smirking.

“What are you planning?” Mischa asked, cautiously amused. There was danger in consulting with the FBI, but she knew that sometimes the closer you were to something, the less likely you were to be seen. If Hannibal could cultivate relationships and friendships with these agents, even if they did see the truth they would not want to, their minds would bend over backwards trying to find an alternative.

Hannibal contemplated the food pierced on his fork, the tines just poking up through the meat and glinting redly in the light. Then he popped it in his mouth and chewed slowly, savouringly. Mischa could almost predict the words he said when he swallowed, “I want to help Will to see the face of the cannibal he is chasing. I want to create some art.”

He wasn’t asking for her permission. His promise to stop displaying his kills had been fulfilled; no one had come knocking on their door chasing after Miriam, and the investigation into her death had petered out. The Chesapeake Ripper had vanished, and their family was safe. Hannibal was informing Mischa of what he wanted to do because she had asked, and because he wanted her to know.

“Oh my god,” Mischa said quietly, as realisation spawned, and her eyes grew wide and her mouth fell open in surprise.

“Mischa?” Hannibal asked, suddenly concerned. He had expected curiosity, amusement, perhaps a request to join him on his hunt. He had not expected whatever this was.

“Oh my god,” she repeated, louder, and laughed. Mischa had discovered what the gleam in her father’s eye meant. “You have a crush!” she exclaimed.

Hannibal’s face went smooth and blank. “Excuse me?” he said tonelessly, demanding an explanation.

Mischa laughed again, then calmed a little and beamed fondly at her father. “You do,” she insisted. “You have a crush on this Will Graham. He is ‘unique’ and has ‘pure empathy’ and you want to help him catch a serial killer. You want to _create art_ for him!”

“I do not have a ‘crush’ on him,” Hannibal said scornfully.

“Tėti,” Mischa murmured, struggling to hide her smile. “I have seen you interested in people before, I have seen you attracted to people before, but never both for the same person. You’ve never wanted to leave someone a _gift_ before. Tell me that the art you want to create for Will Graham is not the serial killer equivalent of flowers on a first date, and I swear I won’t breathe another word on the matter,” she promised teasingly.

Hannibal scowled. “I wouldn’t put it quite like that,” he said, but did not deny her assertion.

Mischa grinned again, but bit her tongue from saying anything further. Gentle teasing was good for her father, but she knew when to push and when to let things go. Hannibal had only met Will Graham once, after all. That was what the gift and the investigation – their flowers and first date – was for. To get to know a stranger and to start learning whether or not they were as interested and attracted as Hannibal first thought. Perhaps they would have a romance, perhaps they would become friends, or perhaps nothing would come of it at all. Whatever happened, Mischa would watch carefully and act, always, to protect her father.

“I was considering asking you to join me,” Hannibal mentioned later as they tidied up in the kitchen.

Mischa considered this for a moment. On the one hand she had never had a chance to witness her father creating art, as opposed to butchering his kills, and she would love to watch him create his masterpieces. On the other, whilst this kill would be displayed, it would hopefully never be attributed to the Chesapeake Ripper, because it was not truly the Ripper’s design, it was merely a dark reflection of the cannibal they were chasing in Minnesota. Mischa wanted to watch the Ripper work, not a copycat. It was also to be art for a very specific audience and the idea of watching its creation seemed invasive, somehow.

“No, thank you,” she told Hannibal. “Bring something home for me, though?” she requested.

“We haven’t had lung in a while,” he suggested, and Mischa nodded in agreement. “I will leave immediately after my last appointment tomorrow, I should return in time for lunch on Saturday. Although I fear I won’t be home long before the FBI summon me back. Will you be alright at home alone?”

“Yes, tėti,” Mischa reassured in the same long-suffering tone of teenagers everywhere. Then, more cheerily, “Would you like me to provide an alibi for tomorrow evening?”

Hannibal raised an eyebrow and commented dryly, “I had assumed you wouldn’t immediately sell me out. Do you have something specific in mind?”

“Do you remember watching _Mulan_ with me a few months ago?” Mischa asked faux-innocently.

Hannibal froze for a moment, and sincerely hoped that his daughter was not implying what he thought she was implying. He remembered starting to watch the film with her, but he did not generally enjoy watching television, he liked cartoons even less, and singing cartoons were completely beyond his scope of interest. He had fallen asleep in the first half hour of the film and only woken several hours later, screen long since gone dark and a blanket tucked carefully around him. Hannibal had been touched by the gesture, but also aware that Mischa would do something in retaliation for his neglect of her that evening.

“I’ve been saving this,” Mischa remarked. She pulled out her phone and fiddled with it for a moment, before turning the screen so that Hannibal could see it.

It was a photo of himself asleep on the sofa. He was still upright, but he was slumped over and rather crumpled looking, in a shirt and sweater rather than one of his crisp suits, he had a day’s worth of stubble on his chin, and his hair was starting to slip down across his forehead. Mischa was curled against his side, holding her phone up to capture both of them, but was smiling fondly at him, rather than the camera. It was not at all how he presented himself to the world, but it was not as bad as it could have been.

“I suppose there is no way that Mrs Komeda won’t see it?” Hannibal sighed.

Mischa giggled and shook her head. “Sorry,” she apologised insincerely. Mrs Komeda – Francine – claimed to use social networking sites to bolster sales for her books. In reality, she used them so as to always be the one with a juicy bit of gossip. As soon as Mischa was old enough to be allowed her own cell phone and set up accounts online Francine had immediately added her as a friend, in the hopes that one day she might learn something more about Hannibal than his public façade. She would have a field day with that photo although it would not really show her anything new.

Hannibal bowed his head in acceptance, and passed the phone back to Mischa. When he looked back up again, she was looking at him a little uncertainly.

“If you really don’t want me to, I won’t,” Mischa said. “But I really like the photo, I like that it shows you just as my tėtį, not the doctor or the patron of the arts or the serial killer, just mine.”

“I generally prefer that such moments remain just ours,” Hannibal commented, before adding, “but since I fell asleep during this moment, I believe that makes it entirely yours. I appreciate that you asked me first.”

Mischa lurched forward and hugged him tightly. “I prefer to keep you to myself too,” she told his collar.

Hannibal embraced her in return and pressed a kiss to her curls, a howl of satisfaction resonating silently through his being. Parenthood had him frequently on tenterhooks, not because he doubted his ability to keep Mischa, but because his affection for her was such that any pain he caused her – and he would cause it, if he felt he had to – would be reflected and magnified in his own being. Whenever she showed him that such measures weren’t necessary, whenever she echoed his possessiveness back at him, it thrilled him to his very core. Mischa was still learning and growing, but one day she would be his equal in every sense of the word; she would become his greatest triumph.

The next few days were incredibly busy, and Hannibal spent far too much time on planes. Mischa had asked for a lift home from school from her aunt Katarina on Friday because Hannibal was ‘working late’. Whilst he was on the plane to Minnesota using one of his fake identities, Mischa posted the photo of them, with a comment about him being worn out after a long day but still making time for her. He returned, as predicted, in time for lunch on Saturday, before taking an afternoon nap and then waking to show Mischa how to properly prepare and flambé human lungs.

Later that evening, as predicted, Hannibal got the call from Jack Crawford to head back out to Minnesota. Hannibal managed a few hours of sleep before a very early morning flight and shared breakfast with Will Graham of the leftover meat from Cassie Boyle. Shortly after they finished eating and Hannibal had retreated from the room so that Will could get dressed, he received a call from his home phone number.

_“Good morning, tėti,”_ Mischa said, when Hannibal picked up. _“Did you arrive alright?”_

“Safe and sound. How has your morning been?” he replied.

_“It could have been better. You didn’t need to send Doctor Bloom to check up on me – you know perfectly well that I can take care of myself.”_

“You like Alana,” commented Hannibal, amused.

_“I like her at reasonable hours. I don’t like her waking me up at 8am on a Sunday!”_ Mischa complained.

“However will you survive?” Hannibal said dryly, smile still curling at the edges of his mouth.

_“If you didn’t want to be woken up at ridiculous hours, you shouldn’t have agreed to consult with the FBI on an ongoing investigation – don’t drag me down with you.”_ Mischa knew that these few days flying back and forth hadn’t been easy on him, and having to return to his usual business hours on Monday would be tough. She was reminding him without stating it explicitly why he had decided to do this. She wasn’t passing judgement either way, and she wouldn’t until she could properly assess the danger that working with the FBI, and more specifically Will Graham, posed.

Movement out of the corner of his eye alerted Hannibal to the fact that the subject of his thoughts had just emerged from his motel room, and looked ready to leave.

“I have to go. Enjoy your morning with Alana,” Hannibal said to Mischa.

_“Have fun flirting,”_ Mischa replied. _“And stay safe. Love you.”_

“You too. Good bye.”

_“Bye._ ”

“Who was that?” Will asked, once Hannibal had hung up and they’d both got into the car.

“My daughter,” Hannibal said.

Will was silent for a moment as he turned this piece of information over in his head, considering it from different angles. Once they’d pulled out of the lot and were onto the road he said, “I don’t speak Italian, but did you mention Alana – Doctor Bloom?” he corrected himself.

Hannibal was a little surprised that Will had been able to identify the language that he and Mischa had been conversing in, the scolded himself for being surprised – he would allow that only if Will successfully recognised Lithuanian. “I asked Doctor Bloom to check in on her this morning. She was calling to tell me that it wasn’t necessary, but that if I absolutely insisted on it, could it please not be quite so early in the morning.”

Will chuckled at that, but didn’t ask anything further. Given their earlier conversation where he’d scoffed at the idea of friendly, adult conversation, Hannibal was not surprised. He absently wondered whether having a daughter made him any more interesting in Will’s eyes.

For Hannibal it was fascinating to see ‘behind the curtain’, as he phrased it when Will asked. He was used to being the one creating crime scenes, not investigating them. After several hours of going through boxes of old files he was much more appreciative of the work that went into such investigations, and incredibly grateful for his own normal role. Catching the right prey and turning someone ugly into something beautiful was hard work, but it was rewarding, and there was none of the monotony he was finding on this opposite side. Still, he was very much looking forward to the climax of this manhunt.

When Will identified someone who fit the working profile of the so-called Minnesota Shrike, Hannibal could not resist stirring the pot a little further. He distracted Will and the reluctant receptionist, and placed a quick call. It was a girl who answered the phone, older than his own daughter, but voice still sweet and high, and confident in her position within her family as most beloved. Hannibal idly wondered whether she would still be alive in a couple of hours – just how much was she beloved? He warned her father, keeping the call brief enough that it couldn’t be traced, then joined Will in the car to see for himself the chaos that he had wrought.

The next hour passed quickly, yet Hannibal could recall every minute detail, if he so wished. The delicious panic in Will’s eyes as a woman died beneath his hands, her throat cut before they arrived, and past any attempts to save her. Then – _then!_ – the anger, the determination, the euphoria, as he shot Garrett Jacob Hobbs over and over again, the man flailing backward in an almost comedic manner before collapsing back against his kitchen cabinets and gasping his last breaths. It was, Hannibal realised, as Will rushed forward to help the girl bleeding out on the floor, a kind of suicide. The way that Will found killers was to become them, and in becoming them, did he not also kill himself if he killed them?

Hannibal saved the girl’s – Abigail’s – life that day, although whether she would stay clinging to life was, at this point, unclear. What was clear was that Will was suffering from a certain amount of transference. He had become Hobbs, and so Abigail had become his daughter, just as she had been Hobbs’. This was curious, and it was something that Hannibal could work with, especially if Abigail was a participant in her father’s hunts as he suspected. However, if they were both to start assuming a shared parental role, he would much prefer that it be for his own daughter, and not a stranger’s.

Abigail could still potentially be useful because she was expendable. There was something tantalising about the thought of giving someone something they loved before ripping it away and destroying it, and destroying part of that person in the process. Hannibal wondered how beautiful Will would look when his heart got broken. Hannibal would offer him something in return, something permanent that could never be taken away, because he would obliterate anyone who tried to take Mischa away.

Hannibal allowed Will a small amount of time at Abigail’s bedside, before tugging him away. Will had brought his bag with him to the hospital, so Hannibal grabbed it, as well as his own, before directing Will to the passenger side of the car that he was renting and taking the keys from him.

“Where are we going?” Will asked, sounding hollow and a little lost. Shock, probably. Potentially something else more appealing and less appropriate.

“Home,” Hannibal replied simply.

He drove Will to the airport, returned the rental car and bought them two tickets for the next available flight back to Baltimore. Will was silent for most of the wait and the journey home, apparently lost in his own head. He only started talking again when he realised that they had landed in Baltimore rather than Washington, and that Hannibal was gently but firmly ushering him to his Bentley, because Will’s own car was at least an hour’s drive away.

“I thought you said that we were going home?” he asked, sounding as though he wanted to be angry and confrontational, but only managing to sound tired.

“We are,” Hannibal reassured. “I am taking you to my house. I have several guest bedrooms for you to choose from for tonight, and I can drive you to your home tomorrow.”

“Why?” Will said, flabbergasted. “You don’t know me, you don’t like me, why would you do that?”

“You are the one who does not like me,” Hannibal corrected and said nothing of his own feelings – let Will assume what he would. “Regardless of either of our feelings, I cannot in good conscious leave you alone after today.”

“Is this your idea of keeping it professional?” Will hissed, lashing out at the comment about his vulnerability.

Hannibal raised an eyebrow at him. “I am not planning on any attempts at your virtue, if that is what you are worried about.”

Will laughed, as Hannibal had hoped he would, but it was blunt, broken thing that went too quiet too quickly.

“I find that after traumatic experiences or difficult days, the fastest way to put it behind me is good food and good company,” Hannibal continued, more seriously.

“I’ve already told you that I don’t find you very good company,” Will remarked.

Hannibal inclined his head in acknowledgement of that. “I shall have to hope that you do enjoy the company of my daughter – if only to distract you from thoughts of today.”

Will didn’t say anything to that and spent the rest of the drive staring out of the window.

By the time they arrived at the Lecter household it was coming up to 10pm, and usually by this time on a Sunday Mischa would have curled up somewhere with a book, possibly already in her pyjamas and cradling a hot chocolate. Hannibal had texted her before their departure from Minnesota airport, letting her know that he would be home in a few hours with a guest and that neither of them had eaten anything substantial since breakfast, so would she make something for them to eat when they arrived.

Mischa was by no means as good a cook as her father, but she spent enough time in the kitchen with him, eagerly listening to his hints and tips and helping him out more and more as she got older, that she was more than able to throw together a simple, hearty pasta bake that was heavy on the carbs, full of flavour and nutrients, and could sit in a warm oven for as long as needed until Hannibal and Will arrived.

When she heard the car pull up outside she set aside her book and turned the kettle on, fetching mugs and teabags to serve hot tea alongside the food.

“Mischa?” Hannibal called as he entered, and there was a low murmur of voices as he exchanged a few words with his guest that Mischa could not hear from the kitchen.

“In here!” she replied, and turned to greet him with a wide smile.

“Mischa,” he repeated warmly, quietly, as he appeared in the doorway. He strode quickly across the room and enveloped her in his arms, pressing a kiss to the top of her head.

Mischa hugged him back tightly and grinned foolishly into his chest. She’d known that he was fine, but the shooting of the Minnesota Shrike had been in the news that afternoon, and the report had said that someone had died, that someone else was in critical condition in the hospital. Mischa had known that her father wasn’t either of those people, but it was good to see and hold him to confirm that knowledge for herself.

When he pulled back from the embrace Hannibal looked down at her and there was something challenging in his expression, something playful. Mischa tipped her chin up at him in acceptance to his unspoken question and he smiled, tucking some of her hair behind her ear, before taking a deliberate step to her side and then behind, turning to face the man still hovering awkwardly in the kitchen doorway. Hannibal now stood behind her, and kept his right arm wrapped in front of her. The hold was a little possessive, but it wasn’t dangerous in any way. Yet Will Graham’s hands clenched and unclenched desperately at his sides.

Hannibal had carefully recreated a mirror of the scene they had walked into earlier that day. He had cast himself in Hobbs’ role, and Mischa in Abigail’s. They were in a kitchen again, and Will was worried and a little scared at the entrance. This time there was no dead wife on the doorstep, and there would be no knife in the daughter’s throat. This love between father and daughter was not destructive or constricting because Hannibal could do something Hobbs could never do. He could let his daughter go, because he knew she would always return to him.

“Mischa, meet special agent Will Graham. Will, meet my daughter, Mischa Lecter,” Hannibal said, and drew his arm back across Mischa. There was no knife and no arterial spray of blood as he let her go, and Will noticeably relaxed, less tense than he had been since before pulling up in front of the Hobbs’ house. This was how that scene should have ended.

“Pleasure to meet you, Mr Graham,” Mischa said, walking across the kitchen and offering him her hand to shake.

To Hannibal’s pleasure, Will stepped more fully into the kitchen so that he could meet her half way. “Please, call me Will,” he offered. “Your father already does.”

“Mischa, then,” she replied. “I heard you saved my tėtį from a serial killer today. Thank you.”

“What does ‘tėtį’ mean?” Will asked, squinting at her though his glasses.

“Daddy, papa,” Mischa translated. “In this case, a certain Doctor Lecter who promised me that he would _stay safe_.” She turned to glare at Hannibal as she said the last part, then walked past both of them to the oven to retrieve their meal.

“I’m not sure that he was in any real danger,” Will demurred. “Hannibal’s the one that saved a life today.”

“We could argue the semantics of who saved whom all night if we wished,” Hannibal said, “But, perhaps, instead, food and tea?”

Mischa served both of them a healthy portion of pasta that they ate at the kitchen counter, devouring it between gulps of tea, and she scolded them both for not eating more during the day. Hannibal turned his nose up at the mention of hospital vending machine snacks and coffee, and shuddered at the thought of airplane food, and the friendly teasing even put Will at his ease enough that he contributed his own story of emergency gas station donuts that had both him and Mischa laughing at the horror in Hannibal’s face.

Mischa went to bed not too long after that, wishing both of them a good night and kissing her father’s cheek as she left them to it. She did not know what Hannibal’s game was, but she had been happy to go along with it. Something big had happened to them that day, and it would set the foundation of their relationship, whatever kind of relationship that might be. Mischa wasn’t sure what to make of Will; he had layers of defensiveness and hostility and charm that meant she couldn’t see who he was, although she was certain that her father would take great pleasure in unpeeling those layers. That Hannibal was intent on keeping Mischa at his side as he unravelled Will, making her a part of whatever it was he was hoping to build, was enough for her. For now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things of note in this chapter:  
> The title is a French cocktail named after a gun, in honour of Will and Garrett Jacob Hobb's introduction to one another.  
> Casual reminder that Mischa is fourteen in this chapter, and highly educated daughter of sophisticated European or not, she would still take every opportunity to tease her dad about his ‘crush’.  
> Hannibal is very supportive of _Mulan_ because it features a strong female lead who unapologetically slaughters an entire army and doesn’t need saving by any man. Just don’t ask him to watch it.  
>  The picture of sleeping Hannibal is inspired by the shot we see of him asleep at Abigail’s hospital bed.  
> It occurs to me whilst writing this chapter that, given Hannibal’s penchant for terrible cannibal puns, he would quite possibly be the king of dad jokes. I’ve not done anything about it here, but I feel like I ought to consider it for future chapters…
> 
> NEXT TIME: Hannibal, Will and Mischa all continue to get to know each other, Freddie Lounds is as much a nuisance as ever, and a mushroom farmer gets particularly ambitious.


	4. Chocolat l'Ancienne

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No beta, but thanks to [pandorasnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandorasnow) for the ongoing help with my Lithuanian <3

Will had left by the time either of the Lecters awoke the following morning, but they found a short note of thanks and apology left for them in the kitchen, which appeased Hannibal’s instinctual anger at a guest leaving without saying farewell to their host. The thanks were for the meal, for the bed and for the company that had been better than going home alone, and the apology was for having to leave so early – Will apparently had several dogs who needed feeding before he had to return to Quantico for his lectures that day.

“Are you going to tell me what your plan is for him?” Mischa asked as they ate breakfast, after both of them had perused the note.

“Not yet,” Hannibal replied.

Mischa nodded in easy acceptance of this. “I think I like him,” she said. “Or will like him, when I get to know him.”

“I’m not sure anyone really knows Will Graham,” Hannibal remarked.

“Well then that is _my_ plan,” Mischa teased with a grin, although her smile dropped as she added much more seriously, “But if I think that he is coming too close, that he might be a threat –” She didn’t finish the thought.

“Tell me first,” Hannibal said. “We shall handle such a scenario together this time.”

Mischa nodded again, understanding the implicit message that Hannibal would return the favour.

They moved onto other, lighter topics as they finished breakfast and Hannibal drove Mischa to school, and headed to his office and work.

Jack Crawford requested Hannibal’s services again later that week, this time to do a psychological evaluation as to whether Will should return to field work after his run in with Hobbs. Hannibal easily accepted the request, although it seemed Crawford had a harder time getting such acceptance from Will himself, as it was almost another week after that before the special agent finally knocked on Hannibal’s office door.

The meeting went about as Hannibal had expected it to; Will was still wary to the point of aggressive, he was twitchier than Hannibal had known him to be previously and he prowled the mezzanine like a caged lion. Hannibal’s office was not designed to put his patients at ease, but he found himself wanting Will to be comfortable around him, to be more frequently the man who had laughed with Mischa about terrible food. Hannibal wanted Will to trust him, so that he could shape him into someone that could be trusted in turn. It was an impossible fantasy, but it lingered like the memory of sugar on the tongue long after the sweetness had faded away.

When the hour was up and Will had his evaluation form – completed before he’d even entered the room – Hannibal invited him to his home for dinner.

“You are my last patient today, and Mischa was hoping to meet you again,” Hannibal offered as explanation when Will looked doubtful. His claim was not entirely truthful, but nothing about it was a lie either, and that the mention of Mischa was enough to convince Will pleased Hannibal greatly.

When they arrived at the Lecter home Mischa was not yet back, as she had numerous after school activities, and Hannibal took the opportunity to show off a little to Will, preparing their dinner with perhaps a little more drama and flare than he would do without an audience.

“I wanted to thank you in person,” Will said quietly after several long minutes of silence interrupted only by the sounds of Hannibal’s cooking. “For bringing me here after everything that happened with Hobbs.”

When Hannibal glanced up to look at Will he found the other man staring intensely at his own shoes, face puckered into a frown as though his words had physically pained them. It did not seem to be the sentiment that Will found uncomfortable, but rather the necessity of having to express it aloud to another person. Hannibal suspected that Will needed his thanks to accepted and acknowledged, but was too used to the social convention of people politely brushing it away.

So, instead of insisting that it hadn’t been a problem, Hannibal said, “You are welcome,” and had the joy of seeing Will relax and offer a very brief but authentic smile. “I will confess it was not entirely altruistic. I found comfort in the thought that my daughter and I had an FBI agent sharing the house with us that night,” Hannibal continued.

“You’d just seen me kill a man,” Will scoffed.

“I had just seen you stop a serial killer from murdering his daughter,” Hannibal corrected.

Will didn’t reply and returned to watching Hannibal in a silence that was much less complicated than before.

The next interruption came when Mischa returned home, calling out a greeting in French as she entered, and Hannibal was quick to announce the presence of their guest and the requirement of speaking English.

Mischa looked surprised but pleased to see Will, and that pleasure increased when Will stuttered through his own greeting in Louisiana creole that was enough like French to be recognisable.

“Sorry,” he apologised in English at the look on her, and on Hannibal’s, face. “It’s the closest to French I know.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Mischa said. “This is wonderful. The only people I know who speak French are tėtis and my aunt and uncle.” She leaned towards Will with a mischievous expression, intent on sharing a secret. Instinctively, he mirrored her movement and leaned towards her as well. “You must teach me all the swear words,” she insisted in a stage whisper.

“Mischa!” Hannibal scolded.

She laughed along with Will, before spinning away from both of them. “I need to shower the chlorine out of my hair, I will be back down soon,” she explained as she exited.

Will shook his head as he watched her go, the laughter taking a while to fade from his eyes. “She is quite something – how many languages does she know?”

“Four. Three fluently, and French passably. We are speaking it more frequently at home because she wishes to improve,” Hannibal said, taking the opportunity to show off his daughter.

Will hummed thoughtfully. “I know she speaks Italian from your phone call the other day, and she obviously knows English – what is the fourth?”

Hannibal only provided him a hint, reminding Will; “She calls me tėtis.”

There was a moment of silence as Hannibal could almost see Will flipping through a file in his brain, like he knew the answer was hidden there somewhere if he could only find it. Eventually he sighed and gave up. “I think it might be Eastern European? I’ve never been very good at languages, so I’m afraid that’s the best I can do,” Will guessed apologetically.

“Another demonstration that even in fields that you are not knowledgeable you still do far better than the majority of your peers,” Hannibal complimented, only a little disappointed that Will had not identified the correct language. “It is Lithuanian,” Hannibal finally told him, “The language of the country I came from.”

“Has Mischa ever been there?” Will asked.

“No. I have no wish to ever return, but neither did I wish to deprive her of her heritage, nor of the chance to visit should she wish to. She will have to wait until she is old enough to travel without me accompanying her, however.” Hannibal cut himself off before he said anything further, knowing that they were straying into very personal territory, and their relationship could only barely be classed as friendly, let alone friends.

“I can understand that,” Will said. “We moved around a lot when I was young and I found it difficult to connect with new places, new people. To have had a heritage to lean back on would have been a comfort.”

It was not only the dark impulses of criminals that Will reflected, but also the behaviour and mannerisms of anyone that he met, if he allowed himself, which must be why he kept himself so cut off from everyone. He was starting to relax a little more around Hannibal, had realised that the information that had been shared was a glimpse into his troubled past, and so Will had responded in kind with a hint at his own beginnings. It was a fascinating process to watch, and Hannibal hungered to know more of the past that had played its hand in making the man who stood before him today.

Mischa returned to them before too long, hair now damp from the shower rather than her swimming practice, and the three of them moved to the dining room to eat together, the two Lecters long familiar with one another and both with more than enough social skills to invite Will to join their conversation rather than feel like the stranger at a family dinner.

Will left after dessert, this time being able to say goodbye to his hosts rather than having to make the decision between not taking his leave and having to wake them up very early in the morning in order to do so. Hannibal, with Mischa’s approval, extended an open invitation to dine with them, and they exchanged phone numbers.

“I know you do not want a psychiatrist, and I will not insult you by offering my professional services where they are not wanted, but I hope that I can now offer you a friendly ear, and perhaps advice that is not biased in the FBI’s favour,” Hannibal said.

“You’re wondering whether I’ve started to find you interesting yet?” Will asked lightly, not quite teasing, but with a glint in his eye that took the sting out of his original reproach.

“I certainly hope you weren’t here today purely out of gratitude,” Hannibal replied, aware that part of the reason for Will’s presence at dinner was to thank them for their previous actions.

Mischa became suddenly aware that if she did not cut the proceedings short Hannibal and Will might spend quite some time standing in the doorway and exchanging remarks that were definitely starting to sound – dare she say it – flirtatious. They could just be friendly overtures, of course, but it seemed that Hannibal’s interest in Will was not entirely one-sided, in spite of Will’s comment that implied that he had explicitly stated the opposite. They were, so far as she understood it, doing the linguistic and intellectual equivalent of pulling at one another’s pig-tails.

“It was lovely to meet you properly tonight,” Mischa told Will, “I hope we’ll see you again soon.” Much as Mischa might otherwise enjoy watching their linguistic acrobatics, she had homework to do and could not spend all night waiting to say goodbye to their guest. So they said farewell and Will drove away.

Hannibal looked as though he might say something about hurrying a guest out the door, but held his tongue. They both knew how that conversation would go, and how interesting Hannibal found Will did not need reiterating. Instead they both decided to discuss something else and the rest of their evening progressed as normal.

I was only a few short days later when Mischa and Hannibal returned home to find Will’s car parked in their driveway, and the man himself leaning against it looking anxious and lost in thought. Will’s appearance was somewhat surprising, as Mischa and Hannibal had both assumed that it would take some persuasion to get him to take them up on their offer, but judging from his appearance this was not to be a visit based purely on pleasure.

“Good afternoon, Will,” Hannibal said.

“Hello,” Mischa added her own greeting.

Will glanced between them and rubbed a hand across his face. “Sorry,” he muttered. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have come. I should have left.”

“Nonsense,” Hannibal contradicted, unlocking the door and ushering Mischa and Will inside. “That you came tells me that you wanted to see us. That you stayed indicates that you felt that you needed to.”

Will again looked uncertainly at Mischa and shrugged a little, looking increasingly dishevelled.

Realising that whatever Will had to say he was not willing to do so in front of her, Mischa patted her satchel. “I’m being a terrible host, but I have a school project I really need to work on – would either of you mind if I hide myself in the study?”

“Why don’t you find your laptop and set up in the living room?” Hannibal suggested. “I think Will and I might need to use the study.”

“Alright,” Mischa agreed. She offered to make drinks for everyone, and two coffees and a glass of orange juice for herself later, Mischa was sat cross-legged on the floor next to the coffee table with her back against the coach. It was unusual for her to work in the living room, as she and Hannibal both preferred to keep a clear division between where they worked and where they relaxed, even if it was within the same building, but she was enjoying the novelty of it.

The problem that Mischa was finding was the view offered by the large windows that looked out across their backyard. It was a lovely view, especially at this time of year when the colours of the trees were just starting to change and the whole garden looked damp and glowing with fading life. That was the problem – she was finding it too distracting, and her fingers itched to pick up her pencils and to sketch what she could see before it changed again.

There was something else in the garden though, something that definitely did not belong there. Or rather, some _one_. A pale, slender figure, with bright red curly hair and what looked to be a recording device in her hands. Mischa hesitated for only a moment, loathe to interrupt Hannibal at work – because, for all his comments about their being friends, this meeting, at least, required Hannibal in a professional context – but knowing that if the intruder was who Mischa thought it was, and if they were attempting to record the kind of conversation Mischa thought was occurring, an interruption was absolutely necessary, the sooner the better.

Mischa knocked sharply on the study door and waited a moment before pushing it open. “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said, hoping she hadn’t intervened at an integral point in the conversation, “But we seem to have an uninvited guest.”

“I didn’t hear the doorbell,” Hannibal commented dryly, clearly annoyed.

Mischa winced – she really hated disappointing him – and she hoped she had made the right decision telling him rather than confronting the intruder herself. “They’re not at the door. They’re in the garden. Trying to record your conversation, I think.”

Suddenly Hannibal’s annoyance crystallised into anger, but it was no longer directed at her, but at the person who was the real cause of the upset. Will had been leaning against Hannibal’s desk looking miserable and hunted, and this news did nothing to make his countenance improve, only adding irritation to his uncertainty.

The three of them walked quickly through to the living room and out the patio doors, but the intruder had vanished by the time they got there, and they heard a car starting and pulling away from the other side of the house. Underneath the study windows were a woman’s high-heeled shoe prints clear in the soft earth, and faint wet fingerprints on the window frame.

“What did she look like?” Hannibal asked.

“Small, pale. Very red lipstick to go with very red curly hair,” Mischa replied.

“Freddie Lounds,” Will said. “I haven’t met her, but that sounds a lot like a journalist Jack warned me about.”

“Does she regularly trespass on other people’s property?” Hannibal asked. He had excellent control over his anger, but that did not mean it wasn’t roiling beneath that control.

Will snorted. “Well she regularly trespasses on crime scenes, so I’m going to answer ‘yes’ to that one. We found evidence that she’d been in Garrett Jacob Hobbs’ hunting cabin before we got there.” Once he’d answered he looked anxiously as Mischa again, clearly unsure how much information he could share in front of her.

“You can share as much information about crime scenes with Mischa as you wish to,” Hannibal said. “I have always endeavoured to answer any questions she has honestly without skipping over any facts that might now be considered unsuitable for children.”

“Some of my favourite bed time stories were the old folk tales where they don’t skimp on the gory details,” Mischa added. Neither of them mentioned the human bodies that Mischa had watched her father dissect, nor the one that Mischa had killed and cut up herself.

Shortly, all three returned to their previous tasks, although Will and Hannibal did, perhaps, pay a bit more attention to the view outside the study windows, and talked a little quieter.

Will didn’t stay for dinner that night, in spite of Hannibal and Mischa’s attempts to persuade him, but he left looking a great deal better than when he’d arrived, so Mischa could only assume that the conversation had gone well. She did not ask for details, and although Hannibal considered providing them for her anyway, he chose eventually chose not to.

The following day Mischa went to her aunt and uncle’s in the evening, and Hannibal hosted Jack Crawford. She was mixed feelings about missing that particular dinner, wanting both to evaluate the potential threat to their well-being but also to avoid the man that she had heard such mixed things about. It didn’t matter how Mischa felt about it, however, as she always ate with her aunt and uncle every other Friday, and it would take exceptional circumstances for her to break – or even to want to break – that standing arrangement. She would no doubt meet Jack Crawford soon enough, given Hannibal and Will’s respective interest in one another.

Saturday passed as normal, their usual pattern interrupted only by the posting of a very vitriolic article written by the same journalist Mischa had seen snooping about their property that liberally attacked the FBI, Will Graham, and Hannibal Lecter in turn. The FBI was accused of hiring psychopaths to catch psychopaths, Will was accused of being one such psychopath, and Hannibal was accused of becoming too familiar with a patient. All in all it made a very unpleasant read. There was nothing to be done about it, however, and they attempted to put it – and the anger it generated – behind them.

On Sunday a suspended policeman who had been in the process of confronting Freddie Lounds got shot in the head and not long afterwards Mischa was kidnapped as she left her afternoon art class.

Mischa had been planning to go out with Penny, one of her friends from the class, for hot chocolates and cake until Penny’s older sister finished work and was able to give both of them a lift home. Penny was discovered by her sister about two hours after their class finished, alive but unconscious in the alley next to the café that been planning on going to. Emergency services were immediately summoned, and the next call that had been made was to Hannibal to let him know that Mischa was missing and to find out if he knew where his daughter was.

He did not, and the fear and panic and _rage_ that coursed through him stopped him from being able to logically assess the situation for once, and Hannibal could not think who had a grudge against him who might attack his daughter first. He definitely could not think of anyone who would do so without leaving him a very clear message as to what they wanted. Hannibal did not generally leave his enemies alive.

Before he could think of placing a call to Will or Jack Crawford, Hannibal received a call from them. Jack told him about the attack on Freddie Lounds by the serial killer that they were currently investigating, Eldon Stammets, who was obsessed with the idea of the connections between mycelium emulating the connections within a human brain. When he had read Freddie’s article about the way that Will made connections – and how he was currently attempting to connect to the Lecters – Stammets had fixated on trying to forge that connection for Will, so that the FBI special agent could better understand him.

“Miss Lounds thinks that he will go after either Abigail Hobbs or your daughter, Dr Lecter,” Jack summarised.

“Mischa,” Hannibal murmured in reply, then swallowed hard and repeated, louder, “He’s gone after Mischa. The girl she was with this afternoon has just been discovered unconscious in an alley and Mischa is missing.”

Jack swore and, much as Hannibal usually vehemently opposed such foul language, on this one occasion he couldn’t help but agree.

“Tell me you know where he is going,” he ordered desperately.

“He won’t return to his previous garden. We’ve taken possession of his car, so he must have found another vehicle to use. We find that vehicle, we find him. We find him, we find Mischa,” Jack replied. He didn’t make any promises, because they both knew that he might not be able to keep them, and they both already knew that he would do everything he could to stop Stammets and save Mischa. If there was one thing Hannibal understood about Jack Crawford, it was that he had a dogged determination for solving his cases and catching his killers.

“Where are you now? I’ll send an officer to drive you over. I want you with us, because you know your daughter best, and you’ll have the best idea of how she’ll react in this situation,” Jack said.

Hannibal didn’t mention that he knew enough of the case to know that Stammets’ victims, once they had been knocked unconscious, never woke up again. Mischa wouldn’t be awake to have any kind of reaction.

“I don’t want you driving,” Jack added into the silence, when Hannibal couldn’t respond to him.

“Yes, I –” Hannibal cut himself off. “He has my daughter,” he said in a hollow groan, repeating again the thought that was stuck in his head, echoing over and over again but getting louder and louder instead of quieter. If he alone knew of Mischa’s abduction his fear would galvanise him into action and the Chesapeake Ripper would leave a trail of bodies behind him as he blazed his way toward the perpetrator. But he was surrounded by the concerned family of Mischa’s friend and emergency services staff, he had the FBI on the phone telling him who had his daughter and what they were going to do. Hannibal couldn’t do anything without revealing who he was. He had to trust that Uncle Jack would find Stammets before he buried Mischa.

Waiting for information was agonising. It took twenty minutes for the officer Jack sent to arrive at the hospital and find Hannibal, and a further fifteen minutes for him to be taken to Jack’s location. Hannibal had hoped that when he arrived there would be more information, that he might be able to offer some insight of his own to try and speed up a process that seemed to be taking eons. But there was nothing, no information, no crime scene to evaluate, no insights to be had.

Hannibal sat on a chair in the corner, silent and utterly unmoving as chaos reigned around him as people rushed around – presumably trying to locate Mischa, but having little to no effect so far as he could tell. He’d been there for half an hour when Will arrived. With no crime scene to evaluate there was little for the profiler to do but to join him in sitting and waiting. Will tried to offer an apology at one point, but Hannibal just croaked at him to stop, surprised at the hoarseness of his own voice, and they returned to sitting in silence.

Then, finally, a breakthrough, five hours after Mischa disappeared and over three since her disappearance had been noticed. A cop had been found shot to death next to his car at the side of a road. His death had not immediately been connected to the hunt for Eldon Stammets, but the dash cam footage of the incident corrected this oversight.

The footage showed the police car pulling over a car with one of the backlights kicked out. There was clear view of the license plate, and of Stammets’ face, before the cop seemed to realise that the man he was talking to was the one that the FBI was searching for. He went to draw his gun, but Stammets got there first and the cop’s face disintegrated into a spray of red. Stammets then popped the trunk and the image just about revealed a small, blonde girl lying there, apparently unconscious. After a moment of staring down at her, Stammets slammed the trunk shut, got back into the car, and drove away.

“Where was this? _When_ was this?” Hannibal asked, barely recognising the sound of his own voice. That was his baby girl unconscious in the trunk of some other serial killer’s car, the idea was unbearable.

“Twenty minutes ago, on the road back out to Elk Neck State Park,” one of the FBI technicians – Beverly Katz, Hannibal thought absently – replied. “There are local police at the scene now, but we’ll have more luck tracing those plates than going to the scene ourselves,” she continued talking, but didn’t seem to really be addressing anyone in particular, as she hunched over a computer, fingers flying across the keyboard.

About fifteen minutes later – though it might have been fifteen years for all that Hannibal could tell – Hannibal’s cell phone rang. When he retrieved it from his pocket and checked caller ID he didn’t recognise the number that came up, and he could only stare at it in astonished, painful hope for a long moment. It took Will gently nudging his arm for Hannibal to gather his senses and answer the call.

“Hello?” he said, feeling hope grow painfully in his chest and scolding himself for it, because surely it could not be who he wanted it to be on the other end of the line.

But then – _“Tėti?”_

“Mischa?” he gasped, and with that one word it was like a pebble dropped in the middle of a pond, silence and stillness ballooned outwards, with him and his telephone call at its epicentre.

_“Tėti,”_ Mischa repeated breathlessly down the line.

“I am here, dearest, I’m here with the FBI and we are all looking for you.” Hannibal’s response was a reassurance to Mischa, but it was a warning to her as well. He was coming for her, as he always would, but it was as Doctor Lecter, not as the Chesapeake Ripper – she needed to be aware of who else was listening to this call. Hannibal’s following question was the one the answer to which was the most important in the world to him at that moment; “Are you safe?” he asked, moving closer to the technician from before and giving her both his number and the number that Mischa was calling from so that she could start to track the call.

_“Man gerai, man viskas gerai,”_ Mischa told him, then repeated, in English, _“_ _I’m ok, I’m alright, I’m…”_ Mischa trailed off, moaning desperately, repeating her own well-being over and over, more for her own benefit than anyone else’s, and then burst into uncontrollable sobs, the sincerity of which Hannibal could not determine over the phone.

“Take deep breaths, my brave, beautiful girl,” he instructed. “Just concentrate on my voice, know that I am on my way to you right now. Just keep breathing in and out.”

_“I love you, tėti,”_ Mischa said once her gulping breaths had become a little steadier.

“And I love you, dearest heart,” Hannibal replied, refusing to hide the sentiment behind his usual cool veneer. He didn’t care what any of those around him thought of him at that moment, his entire being was focussed on the tinny sound of his daughter’s voice coming through his cell phone speakers proving she was alive.

Beverly managed to pinpoint the location of the originating call and everything was movement again as people rushed to their vehicles to get to Mischa as fast as possible. Hannibal found himself in Will’s car, the other man having fended off Jack with an unexpected fierceness, and a compromise that he would open a call on speaker phone between himself and Jack so that the senior agent could hear Hannibal’s discussion with Mischa.

“I need you to stay right where you are, do you understand Mischa? We have found you and we are on our way,” Hannibal told Mischa, voice much smoother and calmer sounding than it had been in hours, because he knew he needed to be calm for her, he needed to be her anchor and could not think of his own fears at the moment.

_“I understand,”_ she repeated shakily. _“I don’t think I could go anywhere if I tried.”_

“Mischa, dearest, can you tell me what happened? Where is Stammets now?”

_“Is that his name? He never told me his name –_ _o, dievai!”_ Mischa started gasping again. _“I think I killed him,”_ she wheezed before she lost the ability to talk, and Hannibal started talking her through a basic breathing exercise for several minutes until she had recovered.

_“Where’s Will?”_ Mischa asked. _“The man said he was going to plant me in the ground next to Will Graham, because Will is trying to make connections and he wanted to help him connect with me. Did he get Will already? Is he alright? You need to find –”_

“I’m right here, sweetheart,” Will interrupted her, surprising even himself with the endearment, but it felt comfortable, appropriate for the moment. “I’m sitting next to your tėti, driving the car for him so that he can stay on the phone for you. I am perfectly fine, I’m just worried about you. So keep breathing for me, OK?”

_“OK,”_ Mischa repeated back, sounding terribly small and vulnerable. _“You’re ok,”_ she said. _“I was worried you were dead. I was worried that we’d arrive and I’d see you dead and buried in the ground and I’d have to lie down next to you and die as well.”_

“You are not going to die, dearest,” Hannibal said, and he said it as though he were a god passing down a commandment, as though there was no conceivable option other than what he was saying.

_“When he knocked me out I thought I had,”_ Mischa admitted.

“You are not dead,” Hannibal reiterated, firm and certain because somehow, miraculously, Mischa was not dead, was not even unconscious, and had got the better of a killer that had evaded the FBI for almost two full days.

_“Aš gyva. I am not dead,”_ Mischa repeated back, and Hannibal wished that the distance between them was nothing and he could crush her tight to him and see and feel for himself that she was _alive_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things of note in this chapter:  
> I told you having Mischa around was going to start changing things lol.  
> I promise that we will meet Abigail soon, as she is an important part of this story. She's just busy being in a coma at the moment.
> 
> NEXT TIME: We find out what Stammets did to Mischa, and what Mischa did to Stammets.


	5. Pastis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shout out to the wonderful [pandorasnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandorasnow)! This chapter was difficult to write, and wouldn't be half so good without their help, so thank you <3

Mischa woke up in a small, musty smelling space that was shaking with movement. There was something over her mouth that made her breathing feel funny. She was getting too much or too little oxygen and it made her head spin. She could feel blood caked into her hair and the back of her head ached badly. Had it been bashed hard against something? Her whole body ached and there was an intense pain on the inside of her left elbow, like a bee sting that wouldn’t go away.

She faded in and out of consciousness for long moments and rocked with the movement of wherever she was, each movement making pain explode in her elbow and head. Eventually she was able to gather herself together enough to pull the mask away from her face and to realise that she was trapped in the trunk of a moving car. Carefully feeling at her elbow, Mischa hissed and flinched away when her questing fingers were pierced by something sharp. She realised, with a bit more careful feeling around, that she had been attached to an IV, but the needle hadn’t been protected from the movement of the car properly and had come out.

With the drugs – whatever they were – no longer pumping directly into her bloodstream she was able to regain consciousness, but the needle had ripped through a chunk of her flesh which was still bleeding sluggishly and kept being thrown against the hard edge of the syringe. Taking deep breaths she used the bottom of her blouse to wipe away as much blood as she could from her elbow, biting her tongue to keep from gasping at the pain, then finding a cleaner patch of her top she pressed it hard against the wound to try and stop the bleeding.

Mischa couldn’t think whether it was true or not, but she remembered hearing somewhere that if you find yourself in the trunk of a car you should try and kick out the backlights. It was probably one of those stupid, general ignorance ‘facts’ that appeared on an episode of CSI once, and the public jumped on, but she rationalised that if she could kick out the light the chances of her abductor getting pulled over were increased significantly, and that raised her own chances of being rescued.

As she was feeling around in the dark she realised that there was a thin, cylindrical object of some description that was digging uncomfortably into her ribs. Mischa realised with sudden, dizzying hope that she had been abducted after her art class. And art class meant _her scalpel_. Her father had taught her many things, and chief amongst them was that nothing could cut a pencil nor a man quite so finely as a well sharpened scalpel. She almost wept with relief when she nicked her thumb on the blade as she took the cap off and realised that she was conscious, untied, and now she had a weapon. The odds were beginning to even out a little.

It took a while in the dark to find what she was looking for, and longer still to actually take the light out whilst trying to do so quietly enough that it wouldn’t draw the attention of her captor, but eventually Mischa managed it, and was able to peer through the hole out into the world beyond. The road that she could see was unrecognisable and she could only pray that someone noticed the missing backlight and did something about it.

Whilst she waited, Mischa also went about making certain that, should her captor not be pulled over, she took opportunity of the fact that she was conscious and he was unaware of that fact. Her memories of her capture were a little foggy – no doubt from whatever he had done to make the back of her head ache and bleed – but they were coming back to her a little at a time, and she knew that her kidnapper had a gun. As useful as a scalpel was, it could not truly compare to a gun, so her first priority had to be getting him to put the gun down.

Mischa reasoned that for him to remove her from the trunk of the car he could not possibly be pointing the gun at her, so her best bet was to remain apparently unconscious so that he would assume that she was no threat. To this end, she groped around to find the IV needle. She used her scalpel to cut the majority of it off, and wrapped what remained of it in a small segment of her fleece coat to stop the flow of drugs before taping it back in place over her elbow, biting her tongue hard enough to bleed to keep from crying out, and tears leaking from the corners of her eyes.

Just as she was recovering from her efforts Mischa felt the car slow down and pull over, and she glanced out through the hole she’d created, and could have laughed with relief when she saw the flashing lights of a police car.

That relief did not last for very long when her captor drew his gun just a little faster and the cop was left dead on the ground, surrounded by his own splattered brain matter. She had bare seconds to get the oxygen mask back in place over her face before the trunk was being opened and her attempts with her IV line were being put to the test.

Mischa could only imagine in what state she looked – blood caked in her hair, smeared all over face, and still dripping down her arm. She tried not to tense up too much as she felt her kidnapper stare down at her. Keeping her breathing as low and even as she could, she slowly worked the cap off of her scalpel that was hidden beneath her body in case she was forced to take drastic action.

After a long, tense moment, the trunk was slammed shut again, and Mischa was returned to musty darkness. As the car started up again she pulled the mask from her face once more so she could take several gasping breaths, and tried to stave off her growing panic. She had seen her father kill people before, had killed someone herself before, but her own life had never been at risk. Now, here she was at the mercy of a man who had no compunctions about shooting a police officer at the side of a well-used road, and who was very likely planning to do the same to her.

What had he said, when he had taken her? Mischa remembered… she remembered him jumping them on the street, forcing them out of sight of the general public, and knocking Penny against the wall hard enough that the other girl had slumped to the ground immediately. Mischa did not think her friend was dead, she would probably survive with only a concussion, perhaps a skull fracture if she was very unfortunate. Mischa had tried to fight back and the man had said something about her being a gift? A gift for Will Graham, who was trying to reach out to her, and her kidnapper was going to help her reach back.

He had said something about planting her, before he’d finally managed to get the better of her and smashed her head against the pavement. Mischa remembered, suddenly, the article on tattlecrime.com that had appeared after the one from the Hobbs’ hunting cabin, and before the inflammatory one that had angered her father. She hadn’t read it, so she didn’t know the details of it, but she could picture clearly in her mind’s eye the rows of unearthed bodies attached to IVs and covered in fungi.

Mischa wanted more than anything else to pull the IV from her arm so she could stop imagining herself joining that row of bodies, her flesh rotting and transforming into something utterly unlike _her_. But she could not undo the hard work she had already done, not when she didn’t know how long – or short – it would be before they reached their destination. So she could only tilt her head back, try not to cry, and to hope against hope that she would come out of this alive, that Will was not already lying in the ground waiting for her.

It was impossible for her to tell how much time passed before the car pulled onto a gravel road, travelling some distance further before finally slowing to a stop. It was enough time for her to harden her resolve. She was determined to come out of this alive. So she popped the cap off the scalpel again and hid as much of it up her sleeve as she could, pulled the oxygen mask back over her face and closed her eyes, smoothed out her expression and let her body go lax.

This time when her captor opened the trunk he did not waste any time staring down at her. He rolled her so that she was on her back rather than her side, moved the IV bag onto her stomach, then stooped to get his arms under her shoulders and knees so that he could lift her.

As soon as Mischa was confident that her kidnapper did not have a gun in his hands she slid her scalpel out of her sleeve, then moved as fast as she could to grasp hold of what little advantage she had.

With very little room to move her first stab was made purely out of convenience. A quick and hard jab through the soft flesh of his cheek. He cried out and dropped her as he flinched away from the pain. Unfortunately for him this movement and Mischa’s tight grip on her scalpel meant that the knife cut through his cheek like butter and resulted in half of a Glasgow smile. He clutched at his face and tried to stagger away from her.

At the first sight of vulnerability in her kidnapper, and fuelled by the feel of his blood spraying across her face, the fear that had been driving Mischa turned into something cold and hard and _vicious_.

She grabbed hold of his hair before he could move too far away, then jammed her scalpel directly into his eye, changing the angle of her weapon before pulling it out, digging his eyeball out as she went. She rejoiced in his consequent roar of pain and rage.

Wounded as he was, Mischa’s kidnapper was still larger and stronger than she was and she had now lost the element of surprise. As much as she wished to draw his death out, to watch him suffer slowly as he died, Mischa could not risk him gaining the upper-hand, so she stabbed him one final time. She had enough anatomical knowledge to hit the carotid artery on her first try. He finally fell backwards and out of her grip, his howls of pain soon drowned by the blood frothing out of his mouth. The initial gushing of blood out of his neck soon slowed to a trickle before eventually stopping as the life faded from his eyes.

Mischa had half fallen out of the back of the car, and had wrenched the remains of the IV needle from her arm in the process, reopening the wound that her previous work had had some success at helping to clot. She lay on the ground for a moment, dazed from the blow to her head, whatever drugs had been pumped into her, and a certain amount of blood loss. Eventually, once she was certain that her kidnapper was not about to get up and try to kill her, she staggered to her feet, clutching at her inner elbow, and moved around the car.

Mischa was certain that, in this day and age, her kidnapper had to have a cell phone or some other form of communication on him. Her own phone was probably still in her bag, lost in the alley where she had been attacked, but a brief search of the front of the car revealed a phone that had been switched off probably to avoid it being tracked by the police.

Luck was on her side; the phone still had plenty of battery remaining. It was locked, but fortunately it required a thumbprint rather than a password. Mischa had to steal herself for her next action, not because she had any qualms about using a dead man’s thumb – in all honesty, she could have quite happily cut his entire hand off if she’d needed to – but because the journey to the front of the car had taken almost everything out of her, and she now had to try and get to the back again.

Slowly, carefully, Mischa made her way back along the car, one hand propping her up against it, the other holding on tight to the phone, before she was close enough to reach out to her captor and grab his hand. She had to wipe the blood off his thumb before she could get the phone to register it, but by this point she was covered in his and her own blood, and a little more wouldn’t hurt.

Then, finally, she was able to dial the number that she had memorised from the first day at kindergarten, her father always keeping the same number so that she would always know how to reach him.

The phone rang for so long Mischa began to wonder perhaps it was not ringing at all, that she was only imagining the noise in her own head. When the ringing stopped there was an interminable moment where nothing was said before there was a curt, hopeful, _“Hello?”_

“Tėti,” Mischa said, and felt tears welling up in her eyes. She had done it. She had survived. She sank heavily to the ground and listened to the soothing voice of her father as he told her he was coming for her, as he talked her through a panic attack, as he reassured her that she was alive and soon all would be well.

Hearing Will’s voice brought with it a new wave of relief that was unexpected in its potency – she had only met the man a few times, when had he come to mean so much to her that she would weep at the news that he was not dead? Perhaps it was only the adrenaline, or maybe the idea that, although he had not been physically with her, this was a trauma that they had survived together. Whatever the reason, she wanted him with her almost as much as she wanted her father, so that she could see for herself that he had not been turned into mushroom food.

Even with sirens blaring and moving at top speed it still took some time for Hannibal, Will and their FBI entourage to reach Mischa’s location, and she was starting to feel a little better when they arrived. Her head still ached fiercely, and the whole world span when she moved too quickly, but the wound in her elbow had finally stopped bleeding and she no longer felt as though she would throw up at any moment.

Hannibal didn’t even wait for Will to stop the car before he was launching himself from the vehicle, phone still clutched against his ear until he actually caught sight of Mischa and it slipped from his fingers leaving only a red impression on his ear where he’d been holding it so tightly.

When Mischa heard the vehicles she had hauled herself to her feet once more, leaning heavily against the car, and as soon as Hannibal was within arm’s reach she lurched forward and trusted that he would catch her.

When Hannibal finally held Mischa tight in his arms once more the weight of everything that had happened that day finally hit him and he felt his knees begin to go, so he lowered both of them carefully back to the forest floor; kneeling, clutching at one another and muttering reassurances in a mix of different languages. Ultimately victorious after a long, hard struggle, Mischa felt a wave of emotion swelling up inside her, and she took a great deal of primal satisfaction in smearing the blood of her defeated enemy over her father, physically marking him with her victory.

“Dearest Mischa,” Hannibal muttered into her hair, quiet enough that only she could hear him. “ _You looked like a god of war, drenched in the blood of your enemies and standing, alone, victorious_ ,” he told her, certain that those around them would not appreciate the sentiment, and equally certain that none of them would understand Lithuanian.

“ _Barely standing_ ,” Mischa replied, eyes fluttering in exhaustion now that the adrenaline was fading from her bloodstream.

“ _But standing nonetheless_ ,” Hannibal told her with pride.

Whilst the Lecters were distracted in their reunion Jack Crawford approached Will and asked quietly, “What happened here?”

Will shuddered and looked from Mischa to the body of Stammets, at the blood that was smeared along the side of the car, pooled in the trunk and, now, staining the usually immaculate Doctor Lecter. “I think,” he began hesitantly. “I think we got very lucky.”

Mischa had been able to explain some of what happened over the phone as she awaited their arrival, but their goals then had been to keep her as calm and coherent as possible, and her retelling of the story was piecemeal at best.

“How did she manage to get the better of him?” Jack asked, staring in somewhat impressed horror at the ruin that had Stammets’ face.

Will finally stepped forward, more reluctant than ever to let the pendulum swing, but knowing that if he didn’t let Jack take his frustrations out on him he would, eventually, take them out on Mischa, a scenario that was completely unacceptable. Will explained as much of the story as he could from the evidence before them and from what he’d heard Mischa say. When he was done he could only say, again, “I think we got very lucky.”

“She stabbed him in the eye,” Jack reiterated.

“She’s fourteen,” Will said. “She was drugged, beaten up, but she had a scalpel and access to her kidnapper’s face and neck. I’m more surprised that she only stabbed him three times.”

“That’s another point – where the hell did she get a scalpel from?”

“I had an art class,” Mischa interrupted them, surprising both FBI agents who had been unaware of how loud they were getting.

Both Lecters were standing once more, although Mischa was leaning heavily against her father’s side, and they had obviously been witnesses to a good chunk of the conversation.

Even with bloody handprints on his jacket and smudges of it on his face and his hair still falling in his eyes after his earlier panic, Hannibal already looked more put together than he had done in hours. He had recovered his usual impeccable calm even whilst his appearance was not quite up to his usual standard. “I believe I have already shared with you, Jack, my opinions on scalpels and pencils – an opinion that I have passed on to my daughter.” He added at the tail end of Mischa’s remark.

“I need a full statement from Mischa,” Jack insisted.

“I thought – didn’t I tell you everything over the phone?” Mischa asked, looking dazed.

“Not in English,” Jack snapped.

“It can wait until Mischa has received proper medical care,” Hannibal said coolly. “Will, can you help us to the ambulance?”

Hannibal was perfectly capable of getting Mischa to the vehicle, but he had seen how her gaze had been drawn to Will and he knew that the worry she had expressed for him on the phone was not entirely feigned. He wanted to give them a chance to talk without Uncle Jack hovering over them.

Mischa and Will didn’t really say anything to one another, however, even when Will lingered anxiously at the ambulance door as the EMTs went about assessing Mischa’s condition. When Jack’s voice rang out, summoning Will back to his side, Mischa grabbed hold of Will’s hand before he could leave.

“I’m very glad you’re alive,” she told him quietly.

“I’m very glad you’re alive, too,” Will replied. He squeezed her hand and offered her a weak smile.

Mischa sighed and leant more fully against Hannibal as they watched Will go, and the paramedics fussed about her. They assessed and cleaned Mischa’s wounds, wiping away a lot of the blood that was a mix of both hers and Stammets’, before announcing that they needed to take her to the hospital – preferably sooner rather than later – so they could fully evaluate the damage done to her head and test the drugs that had been injected into her.

“Would you ask Will to visit me when we get home… or – or the hospital? I would like to see him again soon,” Mischa requested of Hannibal, knowing that he would have to talk to the FBI before the ambulance would leave.

Hannibal’s gaze went sharp, and he dearly wished to ask what Mischa planned – and whether it was entirely planned, or if her new-found attachment to the FBI profiler was her own version of transference – but he would not get an honest answer in front of strangers, even if they chose to speak a language the others did not understand.

Mischa understood the unasked question, however, and responded by letting go of his hand and cradling his face briefly, spreading a deliberate smear of blood across one of his cheekbones. She smiled weakly at him before letting her hand drop. Hannibal caught it and pressed a kiss to her knuckles before standing. It did not really answer his question, but he knew her well enough to know that he was going to have to share some news with Jack Crawford that the head of the BAU was not going to appreciate.

“I shall be right back,” Hannibal reassured her, and walked over to Will and Jack.

Will Graham looked pale and angry and glorious; Jack was pushing him to the edge again, but this time it looked as though Will was pushing back. Jack was a good man, but he was tenacious in his quest for justice, and he could not be happy that for the second time in a row the serial killer he was in pursuit of had been killed. His solve record was starting to look a little bloody. It had already been made apparent who Jack’s frustration would home in on this time and it was hardly a surprise. He had already voiced his suspicions of Abigail Hobbs in the previous case, after all.

To that end, Hannibal hesitated over the ultimatum that he was about to deliver to Will. It would look like he was drawing away from the FBI, and given all that had happened to Mischa that was entirely understandable, but Jack would no doubt look on it with suspicion if it fitted his way of thinking. The last thing Hannibal wanted was for his daughter to be suspected of anything other than self-defence, but it seemed, in this, she already had a champion in Will.

“We got lucky,” Will was telling Jack angrily, reiterating the sentiment for at least the third time that Hannibal knew of. “If it had been anyone other than Hannibal’s daughter who had been kidnapped we’d still be sitting on our asses! And when we found Stammets’ victim – _if_ we found his victim – they would be dead and buried.”

“I am very grateful that was not the case,” Hannibal interrupted smoothly. He then informed them, “Mischa needs to be taken to the hospital. As soon as she is able to provide a statement, I will apprise you, Jack.” Having said this, Hannibal hesitated. Now was the moment, and he sincerely hoped that he and Mischa had done enough to produce the outcome they desired. “I must also inform you both that I can no longer act in any kind of professional capacity for Will,” he said.

Jack looked about ready to explode at this information, but it was the heart-breaking resignation that flashed across Will’s features before he went dangerously blank that prompted Hannibal to continue speaking.

“Mischa needs Will in her life as a friend and as part of her support structure right now. I will always prioritise her needs, but I would never put my own professional integrity at risk.” Hannibal turned so that he was addressing Will directly, and only Will. That Jack was there for this conversation was only important because neither of them would have to repeat themselves to him later. “I cannot be your doctor, because my daughter and I need you as a friend. After everything that has happened today, if you cannot be a friend for Mischa, then you cannot be part of our lives.”

Will looked utterly gobsmacked at this declaration, before asking breathlessly, desperately, “Why?”

Hannibal dragged his gaze away from the rare eye contact with Will to look back over at the ambulance, where Mischa was still slumped, exhausted and covered in blood.

“Mischa has gone through something incredibly traumatic today, and she knows the reason for it was because a madman wanted to forge a connection between her and yourself. She now feels the need to cultivate that connection to stop this from happening again.”

“It’s not going to happen again,” Will whispered.

“Because she killed him,” Hannibal agreed.

They both stared in silence at Mischa for a long moment, as Jack edged closer and closer to interrupting.

“Mischa has asked that you visit her tomorrow. I imagine that they will want to keep her overnight at the hospital for observation. Shall we take your presence – or not – as your answer?” Hannibal asked.

Will seemed incapable of words and could only nod once, shakily.

Hannibal looked at him penetratingly and wondered whether today had been his last chance to see such a beautiful, unique mind at work. If it was for anything less than his daughter Hannibal would have found a way to keep Will in his life, one way or another. As it was, he was prepared to cut him out himself if it became necessary. It would be a loss, not to see what Will could become, but no loss was greater than Mischa.

So Hannibal nodded goodbye to Will, and to Jack – not prepared to listen to the older agent’s objections, and well aware that he would get an earful when Mischa gave her statement – and returned to Mischa’s side. He climbed into the back of the ambulance with his daughter, wrapped a firm arm around her shoulders once more and left without a backward glance. Either Will would come to them or he would not. Right now that did not matter. What mattered was making sure that Mischa was alright.

When Mischa got to the hospital they would take all of her clothes as evidence, they would do a scan of her head to check for a skull fracture and potential brain damage, and they would do a full blood work up to make sure that what they thought Stammets had pumped into her blood stream was what she had actually received, so they could properly devise her recovery. Then Hannibal would have to find his daughter a psychiatrist, for there was no question after the trauma she had gone through, that she not receive professional help.

The instinctual, possessive side of him didn’t want anyone near his daughter’s head. She was his and his alone, and he should be the one to care for. But he was too close to her, and knew that even if he might be able to get her to be more honest about her feelings towards the act of killing, he would not be capable of the unbiased help that she would need. But therein lay the problem; to whom could he refer her? Mischa hated Doctor Bedelia Du Maurier with a passion; Doctor Frederick Chilton was a ham-handed hack and a misogynist to boot; and Doctor Bloom was a friend and occasional childminder, making her too close an acquaintance to maintain professional distance.

Hannibal fostered relationships with his colleagues, and anyone that he fostered a relationship with Mischa, too, would have met and formed her own opinions of. He would not force her to see a doctor that she was not comfortable with, nor who she knew too well, and he absolutely would never ask her to see someone who did not meet his own high standards. Doctor Bloom was likely his best option, and if she was not suitable, she would have her own recommendations. Alana had specialised in family and child psychology, which Hannibal had only a passing interest in, so would have more connections in that area of expertise.

Still, the idea of someone else getting inside Mischa’s mind was an intensely disturbing one for Hannibal to cope with, especially as she grew older and became less predictable to him. He had never entirely known what she might say or do or react, but those actions were easier to interpret when she was younger. Now, as she was becoming a young woman, her motives were becoming less clear to him. If he could not understand her, he did not want anyone else making an attempt to either. Yet he must, if he wanted her to regain some mental stability, and he must not let his utter trust in her waver as a stranger attempted to unravel her – and consequently his – life.

Mischa was released from the hospital the following afternoon. The last of the drugs had passed through her system, the bang to the back of her head had looked far worse than it actually was simply because of how much it had bled, and the wound in her arm had been carefully stitched and bandaged. She was on strict orders not to do anything too strenuous, and Hannibal had called her school to let them know that she would be absent this week, but probably capable of returning the following Monday. He expected at the very least Penny would be knocking on their door within a couple of days, but likely she would be accompanied by a host of other young people. Mischa was well-liked amongst her school friends, and the news of her kidnapping would spread quickly.

A more immediate concern was the decided lack of Will Graham at Mischa’s side. There had been a certain amount of manipulation involved in her claiming of Will, because she knew that Hannibal was trying to cultivate a relationship and her actions would only further his agenda, but there had also been a great deal of sincerity in her motives. Mischa had been taken because of Will, and when she had escaped and killed Stammets it had not been purely for the preservation of her own life, but for Will’s as well. Her request for him to visit her in hospital had been a genuine one, and so her disappointment that he was not there was just as genuine.

Hannibal could not find it in himself to tell her of the stipulation he had made of Will yet. When she was better, when the pain had faded a little, when the fresh wounds had scabbed over, he would tell her that Will had made his decision, and that it did not include them.

Reluctantly he called Jack to let him know that he was taking Mischa home, that the agent could visit them that afternoon to collect her statement. Ordinarily it would have been taken at the hospital at the first available opportunity after treatment. Jack had held back only because he was curious as to how the situation with Will would develop, and because he’d been able to piece together most of what had happened from what Mischa had shared over the phone and what Will had been able to see at the crime scene.

When they pulled up outside their home for the first time in what felt like years, although it had actually only just been over 24 hours since either of them had been there, a wonderful surprise was waiting for them in the driveway.

Will’s car, with the man himself leaning against the bonnet, was parked there. He still looked ragged and pale, but he’d obviously had a chance to go home and wash and change, and when he saw them pull up Will smiled.

“Hi,” Mischa greeted him shyly.

“Sorry I couldn’t visit you in hospital,” Will began, looking caught somewhere between awkward and rather pleased with himself. “They wouldn’t let me in with my companions,” he explained.

Hannibal realised, bare moments before Will opened the backdoor of his car what he must mean, but nothing could prepare him for the volume of dogs that exited the vehicle, racing forward to enthusiastically greet Mischa.

Mischa knelt down immediately to embrace them, the events of yesterday entirely forgotten in the wave of delighted canine affection.

“There’s going to be dog hair everywhere,” Hannibal murmured under his breath in his own greeting to Will, as they stood back and watched Mischa get happily swamped by furry bodies. “You might have at least warned me.”

“And missed the look on your face?” Will asked, definitely teasing now. “Never,” he said, looking incredibly pleased with himself. Hannibal found he could not begrudge him that. He had got more than he had expected this afternoon. Not only had Will chosen them, but he had made Mischa – however briefly – laugh and smile like the previous day had never happened, and Hannibal could only be grateful for that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things of note in this chapter:  
> I googled so many weird things for this chapter. I searched what would happen if a needle broke off in your arm and the probability of that happening (basically nil, you’ll be glad to hear, since if it does happen the needle tip can travel to your heart and kill you). I searched what to do if you get trapped in the trunk of a car (all American post-2002 models have built in safety latches that allow you to open them from the inside, but kicking out the backlight is actually a really good plan because you are more likely to get pulled over and potentially rescued… not that that will help you if you’ve locked yourself into the trunk of your own car, which is the most common reason for being stuck in a car trunk). I searched skull fractures (both more mundane and scarier than I thought, depending on the fracture). I also found out that the character of Eldon Stammets is based (ish) on a real guy who is not a serial killer, but is seriously obsessed with mushrooms. If you are bored at work or school, or just want to waste a couple of hours, I highly recommend googling Paul Stamets and finding out a bit more about how actually freaking awesome mushrooms are.  
> There is literally no dialogue in the first half of this chapter, so I’d quite like to know what you thought of the pacing. I’m also interested to hear what you think about Mischa’s reactions to everything in this chapter? Is she the right level of BAMF, but also realistically vulnerable?
> 
> NEXT TIME: Mischa faces Jack's suspicions, and Will has a few questions of his own.


	6. Cafe au Lait

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks, as ever, to the wonderful [pandorasnow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pandorasnow) for the help with the Lithuanian. Any and all remaining mistakes are, of course, mine. Enjoy!

About an hour after Mischa’s release from the hospital, the interrogation they had been waiting for came knocking at their door. It came as a surprise that Jack Crawford was accompanied by not only Doctor Alana Bloom, but also by one of his crime scene technicians. The three of them seemed equally surprised to find Will Graham with the Lecters, so Mischa found she could forgive them for their ambush, although she doubted Hannibal could.

“What are you doing here, Will?” Jack asked, once all the introductions had been made.

“I’m here as a friend,” Will replied, keeping his face carefully blank, then he gestured out of the large French doors at the garden where his dogs were all happily investigating the new space. “I thought Mischa might appreciate meeting the pack.”

“If you would all like to take a seat, I shall fetch refreshments,” Hannibal said, before Jack could launch into the many questions that he clearly had. Much as Hannibal was loath to leave Mischa alone with them, he was confident in her ability to hold her own, and as a host he could not leave his guests without drinks at the very least.

“Before we start,” said the technician who had been introduced as Agent Beverly Katz, as she moved to perch next to Mischa on the sofa, “I have a gift for you from myself, Price and Zeller – the other techs I work with. I wasn’t sure that it was appropriate, but hopefully you’ll like it.”

Curious, Mischa took the small, slender box that Agent Katz offered and lifted off the lid. Tracing her fingers over the engraving Mischa couldn’t help but smile. Inside the box was a scalpel that, if it was not the one that she had used the previous day, looked very much like it. On one side they had etched the words: ‘Mischa’s weapon of choice against pencils and serial killers’.

Jack looked furious when he saw what it was and Alana looked distinctly uncomfortable, but Will seemed interested only in how Mischa reacted to it, rather than reacting to it himself.

“Thank you,” Mischa said, gratefully. “It’s horribly inappropriate, but thank you.”

“Good,” Agent Katz replied, looking satisfied. “Hopefully you won’t need to kill any serial killers with this one,” she added irreverently.

Mischa laughed in surprise, and put the lid back on the box before tucking it away. She would take great delight in showing it to Hannibal later, who she was certain would love it. Mischa wanted to have that moment with him in private, however, not in front of so many FBI agents.

“How are you feeling, Mischa?” Alana asked then. She was always softly spoken, but there was a new layer of gentleness in her tone that Mischa was not sure that she appreciated. But, for now at least, she had to play the role of victim to perfection. That she had indeed been Stammets’ victim made her task easier, but Mischa had become the predator for a moment as well, and she could not let these people, especially Jack Crawford, see that for even one second.

“Sore, mostly,” Mischa said honestly. “Tired. A little hazy from the pain killers.”

“And emotionally?” Alana prodded.

Mischa sighed and let her eyes close, letting them see the exhaustion that she had been battling since the previous evening. She had not slept well at the hospital, and she had not had long enough at home to even squeeze in a quick nap. “I don’t know,” she confessed. “I don’t know, and I don’t want to try and find out right now, in front of you all. Tėtis is looking into finding a psychiatrist for me.”

“I would like your input, Alana,” Hannibal added as he returned with a tray of hot drinks and a plate of exquisite miniature cupcakes. He briefly explained his dilemma, and the disinclination for a crossover between professional and personal life because of how it might adversely affect Mischa’s therapy. Alana agreed to have a think about it and offer any recommendations that Hannibal might not have considered.

“We need to discuss what happened yesterday,” Jack soon said, and whatever ease had settled over the room was gone instantly.

Mischa looked at Hannibal a little desperately, and Agent Katz stood from her spot on the sofa to that Hannibal could sit next to his daughter.

“Geriausia meluoti tiesa,” Hannibal murmured into the shell of her ear as he hugged her. When he leant back he placed his hands on her shoulders and said, “Just tell us the truth, from the beginning, and know that if you need to stop at any time, you can.”

Mischa nodded, closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths as she recovered the panicked mind set from when she had first awoken in Stammets’ car trunk.

Then she opened her eyes and told them the _truth_ of what happened.

The truth that Mischa told them had her panicked and afraid from the beginning to the end of her tale. It had her reacting badly to Stammets’ sudden and unexpected movements, that led to a sliced open cheek and eviscerated eyeball. She told them that she wondered whether, if she had not kept the grip on her scalpel so tight or the blade on the weapon so sharp, maybe she would not have done so much damage, but maybe she would not have survived at all.

Mischa had thrown up twice from the physical effort of travelling from one end of the car and back again, but she told them that it was in response to what she had done to Stammets and they believed her. Her face, when they arrived at the scene, had been caked in as many tears as it had been in blood, and she did not have to lie when she said that she had been emotionally overwrought.

“I don’t think I believed that I was still alive until you arrived, until other people saw what I’d done,” Mischa finished. She had wiped away a few tears here and there, but it was only at this point that she started crying in earnest.

“You did what you had to do,” Alana reassured her, reaching across the space to take Mischa’s hand that had not already been claimed by her father.

Mischa squeezed her hand tight in response and asked desperately, “What I did to his face – did I have to do that?” She didn’t wait for a response before dropping Alana’s hand and curling up into Hannibal’s embrace and sobbing into his chest.

“We need to take a break,” Will said quietly.

Jack breathed deeply, looking genuinely sorrowful as he watched Mischa shaking in Hannibal’s arms. “I think we’re done,” he said. “This has answered all of my questions – I can only apologise that we weren’t able to catch Stammets before all of this happened to you.” All of his aggressiveness from earlier was gone. There was nothing that he could accuse Mischa of that she hadn’t already confessed to, and even if he did still believe that her attack had been unnecessarily gruesome, there was no court that would convict her. She had acted in self-defence, no matter how violently.

Mischa kept her face hidden in her father’s chest and kept her victorious smile hidden from the world.

“Thank you, Jack,” Hannibal said, acknowledging his apology.

“We’ll see ourselves out,” Jack offered, standing and gesturing to the others to do the same. “Take care of yourselves, and – let me know how Mischa gets on.”

Hannibal nodded and watched as they filed out, not saying anything when Will stayed put.

“I’d like to talk to Mischa, but it can wait for later if you want me to leave,” Will asked.

Mischa, swallowing down her smile, emerged from her hiding place against Hannibal and shook her head. “Stay,” she suggested, her voice hoarse from talking and crying.

Hannibal ran a hand over Mischa’s curls, smoothing down the hair that had been mussed. “Are you sure?” he asked her lowly; quiet enough that it was evidently a question just for her, but not so quietly that Will couldn’t hear what was said.

“Yes,” she replied, certain.

Hannibal pressed a kiss to her forehead and closed his eyes as he did so, taking strength from the warmth of the skin beneath his lips, from the steady expansion and contraction of her lungs beneath his hands, from the beat of her heart telling him that Mischa was alive. Like Mischa he hadn’t truly believed she lived until he had seen her with his own eyes, and he was still struggling with those hours of uncertainty.

“I shall start on dinner,” Hannibal said, eventually releasing Mischa and standing from the sofa. “Would either of you like anything else to eat or drink?”

“No, thank you, tėti,” Mischa said.

Will shook his head in denial. “Thank you, Hannibal,” he offered, and didn’t make eye contact.

Hannibal stood in the doorway a moment longer, watching Will closely, before leaving. He wasn’t sure exactly what the FBI profiler wished to talk to Mischa about, but he could make an educated guess. It was a conversation that the two of them had to have without Hannibal hovering over them, but that did not mean he didn’t have his misgivings. How Will responded would determine everything that came next in his relationship with both Lecters. Hannibal wasn’t used to leaving the orchestration of such a conversation to someone else, but he trusted Mischa.

“I… saw something,” Will began hesitantly when he and Mischa were alone. “When I was at the scene yesterday evening. I wanted to ask you about it, because I could be wrong, and if I’m not I don’t know what it means.”

“You can ask me anything you want. I’ll tell you if I don’t want to answer,” Mischa assured him.

 “You stabbed Stammets three times,” Will said carefully, watching her face very closely. “Each stab… felt different to me.”

Mischa nodded to indicate he should continue.

“The first stab, to Stammets’ cheek, was desperate and its placement was out of convenience only. The third stab, through his neck, was self-preservation and was done to kill him so that he would not kill you. But the second stab, the one that you used to cut out his eyeball…” Will trailed off; he looked pale and was unable to finish his sentence.

“Tėtį said that you shot Garrett Jacob Hobbs ten times,” Mischa said quietly. “If the first was to get him to back off and the last was to kill him, what were the eight in the middle?”

“That’s not what happened,” Will denied.

Mischa frowned a little. “Then what did happen?”

“I’m not a very good shot.”

“Are you a bad enough shot that you needed to use ten bullets?”

Will hesitated, then admitted, “No.”

In the same hushed tone Mischa confessed, “I didn’t need to stab Stammets three times. I did it because I wanted to. Because he’d hurt my friend, he’d kidnapped me, he’d shot and killed a police officer, and he might have killed you. I wanted him to hurt.”

“I shot Hobbs so many times because I wanted to,” Will replied, exchanging a confession for a confession. “He’d killed eight girls, his wife, and tried to kill his daughter. I enjoyed killing him.”

“Me too,” Mischa whispered. “Does this make us bad people?” she asked, tears shining in her eyes again. “If doing bad things to bad people makes us feel good?”

Will looked shocked by the question. “You are not a bad person,” he said with confidence.

Mischa shook her head in denial. “I cut a man’s eyeball out, and I enjoyed it. Good people don’t feel like that.”

Will’s face did something complicated as he took in her full statement. He could not argue with what she said – good people _didn’t_ enjoy cutting out other people’s eyes – but he clearly wanted to. He floundered for some moments before settling on the response he wanted. “The world isn’t made up of good guys and bad guys. Not really. Perhaps a ‘good’ person wouldn’t have done what you did, but I don’t think a ‘good’ person would have done what I did either. And if it had been anyone other than us, Stammets might have killed his victim, and Hobbs might have killed his daughter. Neither of those things happened.”

“The ends justified the means?” Mischa asked hesitatingly.

Will considered this, and Mischa appreciated that he took the time to think about it rather than responding instinctively. “I don’t think it’s that straightforward, because you weren’t thinking about your survival when you cut out his eye, and I wasn’t thinking about Abigail’s survival when I shot Hobbs. We were both thinking about revenge. That doesn’t make us bad people. It just makes us… human.”

Mischa thought about this for a while and decided that she liked it as an answer. After having seen the way that Will analysed crime scenes the previous day she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that one day Will would discover what Hannibal Lecter was, and what she herself was becoming. If it happened now she or Hannibal would either have to kill him when this happened or Will would tell Jack Crawford and they would be imprisoned or forced to go into hiding. If, however, they could keep him questioning his own morality, could settle him firmly in the grey middle ground, if they could encourage him into his own becoming, there was a chance that they would get to keep him.

“I’m glad that you didn’t share this with Agent Crawford,” she told him.

Will shook his head. “I couldn’t. For both your sake and his. Jack wouldn’t have understood and he would have attempted to go after you. He wouldn’t have succeeded, but he would have caused irreparable damage to your life and his own. Jack is already determined that Abigail must have helped father with his kills, he didn’t need to go after another innocent girl.”

“Are you so sure that Abigail’s innocent?” Mischa asked him. “Agent Crawford knew that I wasn’t, even if you’ve managed to convince him that I am. Maybe he’s right about her, too.”

“Why would you say that?” Will questioned, looking honestly surprised, and a little annoyed at what Mischa was saying.

Mischa hesitated – if she said too much now, and Will discovered Hannibal’s secret too early, she would be forging her own destruction. But she wanted to know how attached Will was to Abigail, to what lengths he may go already to protect her secret, so that Mischa might have some gauge to predict his future behaviour.

“I love tėtį a very great deal, and he loves me just as much,” Mischa said, choosing her words carefully. “If he told me that he was afraid that his love might… consume me, and that killing girls that looked like me would appease that urge, I don’t know that I wouldn’t help him.”

“I can’t imagine Hannibal ever losing control like that,” Will reassured her with a gentle smile.

Mischa shook her head, not needing the reassurance. “I’m not suggesting that he would, I’m saying that my love for him trumps otherwise impassable moral boundaries. And if Abigail loved her dad the same way, it’s not out of the question that she might have helped him.”

Will scowled at his hands, turning this information over in his head. “I don’t like it,” he said.

“I don’t know if it’s true or not,” Mischa said. “I don’t know enough about any of what’s going on even to make a guess. It just seems to me like maybe she had to make an impossible decision, and maybe she made the only choice that would keep her alive.” She paused as they both considered this. “What will you do if she did help her dad?”

“I don’t know,” Will said and sighed, burying his face in his hands. “There’s a lot that I don’t know at the moment.”

“You protected me,” Mischa said.

Will looked up and met and held her gaze for a long moment. “You are worth protecting,” he told her fiercely.

Mischa felt herself flush with warmth at that proclamation, and wondered whether her attachment to Will was not already greater than she had thought it was. She was fascinated by her father’s interest in him, but Mischa had felt her own interest and curiosity grow as she had seen Will work at her crime scene, and again when they had discussed their actions when faced with serial killers. She could easily fantasise a world where they were a family, where her father would have a companion even when she grew up and left home, where she could always return home to two pillars of loving support.

It was only a fantasy, but it was a wondrous one.

“You are as well, you know,” Mischa said, smiling at him shyly.

“What do you think I need protecting from?”

“The nightmares you create for yourself, maybe,” Mischa suggested, reaching out to brush her fingers softly across the top of one of his cheeks, beneath the deep shadows that suggested sleepless nights. “You look more tired each time I see you.”

“Will you have nightmares about Stammets?” Will asked.

Mischa thought about this. She wouldn’t have nightmares about killing him, she didn’t think, because she was not afraid of what she had done and she did not regret it. She would probably have nightmares about the car trunk, though, and she was going to have to work hard not to develop claustrophobia as a result of what had happened to her. “Probably,” she said to Will, rather than say all of her thoughts aloud.

“I have nightmares about Hobbs. About what I did to him.”

“Should I feel guilty about what I did to Stammets?”

“No!” Will exclaimed.

“Then you shouldn’t feel guilty about what you did to Hobbs,” Mischa said decisively.

Will grimaced what was probably supposed to be a smile. “It’s not that easy. You can’t just say something and it happens.”

“When you’re ready to not feel guilty or afraid anymore, you’ll be able to sleep through the night again,” Mischa told him. “Until then, picture me in your dreams, and I’ll protect you.”

This teased a brief laugh from Will, and a proper smile this time. He didn’t repeat his previous words, only hoped, this time, that what she said did come true. She had already proved herself a fierce protector of her own interests, and for the love of her father. If she could be half so fierce on his behalf in his dreams, he would have nothing to fear from the creatures that haunted him.

“May I play with your dogs again?” Mischa asked, ending their turbulent conversation.

Will was happy to grant her request, and they opened the door to the patio, pulling it mostly closed behind them to keep the dogs from going inside, and Will took the opportunity to introduce her to each of his pack individually, rather than as the one, many-legged hoard she had met earlier.

Eventually, Hannibal called them both in for dinner, and even relented enough to let the pack into the living room after Will assured him that they were all obedient and house trained.

Mischa retired upstairs once they had finished eating, very much looking forward to a hot shower in the privacy of her ensuite, and being able to curl up in her own bed.

Hannibal invited Will to stay for a digestif and, although Will hesitated for a moment, he allowed himself to be persuaded, with the promise of some very fine Scotch whisky. When they were settled in armchairs in the living room, each of them with a dog or two asleep on their feet, Hannibal finally took the opportunity to thank Will for the decision he had made to be there for Mischa.

“I am not unaware that I forced you to choose between her mental health and your own,” Hannibal said, rolling his glass to watch his drink catch the light. He would never feel guilty about doing such a thing, but that did not mean he couldn’t acknowledge his awareness of it, and how it would have made Will’s decision that much more difficult to make.

“Wasn’t much of a choice, not really,” Will remarked, staring deeply into his own glass. “My mental health has always resembled a slip-n-slide, whereas Mischa actually stands a chance of being well again. Besides, there’s no telling whether your therapy would have helped me or not,” he added wryly.

“You do yourself, and me, an injustice,” Hannibal replied. “You have the potential to be as sane and stable as the next person, and I would have done my best to make this happen.”

Will scowled as he thought about this. “In my line of work, the next person is as often a serial killer as not. That’s not a yardstick for sanity that anyone should be held against, especially since I still might not measure up.”

“You reflect the mentalities of those around you, Will. If you are surrounded by the clinically insane without sufficient barriers it is inevitable that you will mirror their insanity.”

“What do you suggest, Doctor, that I give up my job?” Will asked, any relaxation in his posture from the friendly dinner that had been shared was now long gone.

Hannibal raised his eyes to Will, unsurprised to find the other man unable to meet them. “I am not your doctor. If, indeed, I ever truly was, and can offer you no professional advice. I will offer you some friendly advice; this case arrived hot on the heels of the last, and I’ve no doubt that the next will land on Agent Crawford’s desk within weeks, maybe even days. Every time you look you are forced to dismantle your barriers, and Uncle Jack is not giving you time to rebuild them.”

“You think I’m overworked,” Will said flatly.

“To put it simply; yes. I understand that one of the hazards of working in law enforcement is the occasional sleepless night, but tell me, Will: when was the last time you slept through the night?”

Will shrugged before laughing humourlessly. “Mischa said I looked tired, too. She told me that I’ll be able to sleep through the night when I stop feeling guilty.”

Hannibal glanced upwards, as though his gaze was drawn to his daughter even when she wasn’t in the room, even when there was no chance he might catch a glimpse of her. “Children are frequently able to provide insight that escapes adults entirely, and Mischa has always been exceptionally intelligent,” he told Will with a fond smile. “In this case I do not doubt that she is right.”

Seeing the look on Hannibal’s face seemed to make Will collapse in on himself, his face scrunching into a miasma of grief and guilt. “I’m sorry. I am so sorry for dragging your daughter into this,” he stammered, suddenly desperate to finish the apology that Hannibal had not allowed him to verbalise the previous day whilst they had been waiting for any kind of news as to Mischa’s whereabouts.

Hannibal’s face hardened from the expression of love that he always had for Mischa into something entirely unreadable. “You cannot be blamed for any of what happened yesterday. Let us point the finger where it should be aimed; at Stammets for doing the deed and at Ms Lounds for pointing him in Mischa’s direction.”

“If I hadn’t visited you at home, instead of your office, like I should have…”

“Then perhaps Abigail would have been taken. Perhaps it would have been some stranger that none of us knew of and we’d have had no chance of saving,” Hannibal countered, bored of speculating other possible outcomes and wanting to get to the root of Will’s guilt so that he could purge it. He didn’t want Will to be guilty, he wanted him to be certain, to be righteous. “Why do you feel guilty for being in my home?”

Will looked as pale and anxious as Hannibal had ever seen him, but he was making a valiant effort to reply to any questions, in spite of how discomfited he was. “I don’t feel as though I should be here. I feel like an imposter.”

“What do you think that it is you are imposing on? My house is only a house, I open it regularly for my friends and colleagues and dinner parties.”

Will shook his head. “It’s not just a house is it, though? It’s your _home_. It’s Mischa’s home. You are both so calm and collected, and I’m a hot mess. I feel like I’m the… the muddy dog who’s rolled in shit, then shaken it off all over your tidy lives.”

Both of them stared at the dogs at their feet, none of whom were in the least bit muddy and had caused as little mess as seven dogs could possibly be expected to.

Hannibal deliberated over his options for a while, and the fact that he had still not been able to properly discuss with her what Mischa wanted them to do in regards to Will. Then he decided that this was too good an opportunity to pass up. Will had displayed his vulnerability because he felt guilty, because he felt he owed it to Hannibal somehow. If Hannibal responded in kind the dynamic of their conversation would change; they could become friends confiding in one another.

“I had never intended to have children,” Hannibal said in a low, confiding tone that invited Will to lean closer. “When a woman I was having an affair with announced she was pregnant I wanted nothing to do with it. I was prepared to pay alimony, to provide the child with a comfortable life, but I didn’t want to be involved. As it turned out, neither did she. She abandoned our baby on my doorstep, willing to let her freeze to death so long as she didn’t need to care for her a moment longer.”

Hannibal paused and took a deep, shuddering breath, the retelling of Mischa’s first brush with death affecting him now far more deeply than it had at the time. She hadn’t been a person then, she’d only been a nebulous possibility. Will didn’t say anything, just watching him closely and allowing him to take as much time in the retelling as he needed.

“I found her, I named her, I took her in. What else could I do? But for a long time I was, as you put it, ‘a hot mess’. I fell in love with Mischa, of course I did, but loving someone does not qualify you to care for them. I didn’t know what I was doing then and, if I may be entirely honest with you, I still don’t know what I’m doing now. Especially after yesterday, I cannot help but analyse my inadequacies as a father.”

They were close now, both of them on the edge of their seats, leaning forward into the space that separated them. There was no chance of them being overheard or interrupted, but the aura of shared confidences and secrets had them speaking in low voices and breathing the same air.

Will, surprisingly, was the one who breached the gap to place a hand on Hannibal’s knee. “You are an excellent father to Mischa,” he murmured.

“If you truly believe that, then won’t you trust me when I say that you deserve a place in our lives? You are not an imposition. We desire your presence,” Hannibal told him plainly.

“Do you?” Will asked. “I know Mischa does, but what about you? Your interest in me was professional, and you’ve said you won’t be my doctor. Do you desire my presence for your own sake or for Mischa’s?”

Hannibal put his own hand carefully, lightly, over the one Will had placed on his knee. It would be easy for him to pull away, but it was a wordless encouragement of the continued physical contact. “You were the one who insisted that we keep it professional,” he reminded Will quietly.

“What do you want from me, Hannibal?” Will asked in a whisper, his head tilted forward so that his curls just barely swept against Hannibal’s own forehead, and the soft exhalation of his words brushed against his lips.

The moment extended, timelessly. Possibilities swirled in the intimate air around them and Hannibal wanted, keenly, to close the small space between them and kiss Will. He wanted, just as keenly, to split open Will’s cranium and devour the soft, curious grey matter that resided there. He wanted to see and be seen. He wanted to know what Will wanted.

“I don’t know,” Hannibal confessed honestly. He wanted many things but he did not know which he desired the most. Not yet. “What do you want from me?” He did not ask what Will wanted from Mischa.

“I don’t know either,” Will confessed. He held Hannibal’s gaze for a short while longer before he closed his eyes and huffed out a soft laugh. Then he took his hand back and leant back in his armchair, the tension broken.

Hannibal leant back as well and tilted his head in question, wondering what the laughter was for.

“I would never have thought that you would be uncertain about your desires, and definitely not said as much out loud,” Will said and shook his head. “I appreciate your honesty. It means that it’s something that we can work out together, rather than waiting for me to play catch-up.”

That was what Will had been reaching for; a level playing field. Or the appearance of one, anyway. Hannibal had only told the truth, but as he had told Mischa earlier, _geriausia meluoti tiesa_ – the best way to lie is with truth. His unexpected honesty had distracted from his deadly lies.

Hannibal smiled at Will and told him, honestly, “I look forward to that.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things of note in this chapter:  
> You know when you have a plan about what you're going to write, and then you end up writing something completely different? This chapter is that, so I hope it's still worth your while. My original plans for this chapter will be up next. And on that note:
> 
> NEXT TIME: Abigail wakes up.


End file.
